World Notes SOVIET UNION

Just what made Andrei Sakharov tick? The Soviet Academy of Sciences' Brain Institute intends to find out. The mind that helped create the U.S.S.R.'s hydrogen bomb and spearheaded the Soviet dissident movement now lies cut into "blocks" and preserved in paraffin, awaiting examination by the institute's scientists.

The organization was founded in 1926 to study the gray matter of Lenin, and according to director Oleg Adrianov, it has since probed "many, many tens of brains," including those of Joseph Stalin and writer Maxim Gorky. The results of specific studies are classified.

Adrianov hopes the postmortem on Sakharov will shed light on the relationship between brain construction and scientific genius. But the Brain Institute is not especially interested in what made Sakharov the great dissident he was. Says Adrianov: "A political activist can be anybody, but not anybody can be a great scientist."