Alexander Yakovlev

A member of the Soviet Communist Party's Politburo, Yakovlev had a falling out with other leaders and was sent off to be the Soviet Ambassador to Canada (1973-1983). After he returned, he helped make history as a key architect of two policies put forth by then-USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev: "perestroika" (restructuring) and "glasnost" (openness), breaking the decades of iron-fisted dominance by the Soviet government. "He made an enormous contribution to the democratic processes and the transformation of the country," Gorbachev said when he learned of Yakovlev's death. Yakovlev pushed for more freedom in Soviet media, and allowed the truth of Josef Stalin's purges and other Communist-era crimes to be published. It didn't go as smoothly as Yakovlev hoped. "I thought it would be enough to say 'Look people, you are free'," he said later. "But intellectuals raised their heads, then started whining –- and everybody else did not give a damn." But indeed they did: the Soviet Union fell, and Yakovlev was appointed head of then-President Boris Yeltsin's commission for the rehabilitation of victims of Soviet political repression; he later founded the International Democracy Foundation, and chaired it until his death on October 18, at age 81. From This is True for 16 October 2005 Suggestions for further reading: Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Mr. Harvey Klehr, Mr. Alexander Vassiliev Amazon Price: $16.32 Customer Review: This work is mistitled -- there has been no "Fall" of the KGB in America. Author Haynes and Klehr, well-known for their book presenting the evidence from the Venona Project, "Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America", teamed up with former ...   Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts by David C. Engerman Amazon Price: $30.41 Customer Review: This is an entirely fascinating book that is masquerading as a dull study of those unique scholars, mostly social scientists, who in the wake of WWII and in the early Cold War developed and participated in Soviet studies. Engerman with the narrowness...   The Kremlin's Nuclear Sword: The Rise and Fall of Russia's Strategic Nuclear ... by Steven J. Zaloga Amazon Price: $36.00 Customer Review: Before I read this book (for a space history class at UND), I had only heard of Sergei Korolev and his work on the R-7 and Sputnik. My knowledge of the competing ICBMs was limited at best... but Mr. Zaloga's book widened my horizons immensely.   The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor Amazon Price: $11.53 Customer Review: The title At first when I came across this book, made me question the Author's motive,seeing there is so much respect for this Great Man, and so much disrespect for him from Unreasonable and delusional apologetics.This Book Is a wonderful Tome, And R...   The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (Routledge Sources in History) by Richard Sakwa Amazon Price: $36.74 Customer Review: Richard Sakwa's book is a compendium of original documents (or sometimes excerpts) that relate to Soviet history. The author restricts his own words to explanatory comments that set a particular document in context and sometimes relate the effect th...   Newsfeed display by CaRP

About the HUs About This is True Subscribe Free to This is True Your E-mail: Prev: TV writer Devery Freeman Next: Extraordinary doctor Bill Inman Complete Name List

Copyright 1998-2010 ThisisTrue.Inc, all rights reserved. May not be copied or archived without express, prior, written permission. "This is True" is a registered trademark of ThisisTrue.Inc, Ridgway Colorado. 9242