In the first days after his death, the country seemed numb. His death was greeted with a mixture of disbelief, fear and grief. Gods cannot die the way mortals do. His cult had hypnotized the brightest minds. Andrei Sakharov wrote to his wife at the time, “I am under a spell from the death of a great man. Thinking about his humanity.”21 Sakharov cited this letter in his memoirs, struggling to explain his own reaction.
