10/07/2026
Andrei Sakharov married Klavdia Vikhireva in Ulyanovsk on this day, July 10, 1943, and was warmly welcomed into his parents-in-law's modest home. Until the death of his father-in-law, Alexey Vikhirev, in 1976, Andrei maintained a warm and cordial relationship with him. Alexey was fascinated by his son-in-law's engineering genius and always relished their conversations.
Later that year, Klavdia lost her first pregnancy after strenuous physical labour during the potato harvest. In early 1945, nearing the end of her next pregnancy, she accompanied her husband through a blizzard to the railway station as he departed for Moscow to begin his PhD studies under Igor Tamm. The young couple, both deeply anxious about the imminent birth, hoped their separation would be brief.
In reality, it took more than eight months to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles before Klavdia obtained permission to travel to Moscow with their baby daughter, Tanya. During that separation, they wrote to one another every single day. Almost one hundred of those letters survive in the family archive.
Photograph: Klavdia, Andrei and Tanya in 1947. Moscow.
Credit: family archive
