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 is a book about liars and deceivers. A history (circa World War II)of people who lied and deceived others - and themselves - in the service of a foreign nation whose objective was to radically change the political landscape of America by force i...   Know Your Enemy: The Rise and Fall of America's Soviet Experts by David C. Engerman Amazon Price: $27.43 Customer Review: It is astounding to realize how few Russian experts (barely beyond single digits) there were in the United States before the 1917 revolution and even before World War II. Indeed, in 1948, when the war with Hitler was won and the Cold War just begun, ...   The Ghost of the Executed Engineer: Technology and the Fall of the Soviet Uni... by Loren Graham Amazon Price: $19.58 Customer Review: I read this for my History, Technology and Science class in college. It is quite intriguing a life that Palchinsky leads. The book starts off telling about his life in general and how it ended, and his influences on Russia. But then halfway through t...   The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union (Routledge Sources in History) by Richard Sakwa Amazon Price: $38.66 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...   The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism by Paul Kengor Amazon Price: $13.22 Customer Review: A must read. An addicting page-turner. Three things make this book extraordinary: 1) it was written after the declassification of so many vital U.S. documents, 2) it was written by an author willing to dig deep through those documents f...   Newsfeed display by CaRP

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