“The ideologist of perestroika A. Yakovlev was a CIA agent and Gorbachev knew about it.” The main ideologist of perestroika, Yakovlev, is an American agent? Yakovlev under Gorbachev, who is he?

Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev (December 2, 1923, village of Korolevo, Yaroslavl province - October 18, 2005, Moscow) - Soviet and Russian political figure, publicist, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, one of the main ideologists, “architects” of perestroika.

Participant of the Great Patriotic War. Member of the Communist Party from 1944 to August 1991, member and secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (1986-1990), member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee (1987-1990). In 1995-2000 Chairman of the Russian Party of Social Democracy.

I studied a lot and meticulously the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and other “classics” of Marxism, the founders of a new religion - the religion of hatred, revenge and atheism.

Yakovlev Alexander Nikolaevich

Born on December 2, 1923 in the village of Korolev, Yaroslavl region, into a poor peasant family. Father - Yakovlev Nikolai Alekseevich, mother - Yakovleva Agafya Mikhailovna (nee Lyapushkina). During the Great Patriotic War he fought on the Volkhov Front, where he commanded a platoon as part of the 6th Separate Marine Brigade (1941-1943), and was seriously wounded. In 1943 he joined the CPSU. In 1946 he graduated from the history department of the Yaroslavl State Pedagogical Institute named after. K.D. Ushinsky. In parallel with his studies, he headed the department of military physical training. For a year he studied in Moscow at the Higher Party School under the CPSU Central Committee. Since 1948 he worked for the newspaper “Severny Rabochiy”, from 1950 to 1953 - head of the Department of Schools and Higher Educational Institutions of the Yaroslavl Regional Committee of the CPSU.

From 1953 to 1956 - instructor in the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee. After the 20th Congress of the CPSU, he attended graduate school at the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee. In 1958-1959 Trained at Columbia University (USA). Then again at work in the CPSU Central Committee - instructor, head of the sector, from 1965 - deputy head of the propaganda department, from 1969 to 1973. for four years he served as acting head of the department.

In 1960 he defended his candidate's dissertation, and in 1967 - his doctoral dissertation on the historiography of US foreign policy doctrines.

In November 1972, he published an article “Against Anti-Historicism” in Literaturnaya Gazeta, which contained criticism of nationalism and caused a wide public outcry. In 1973, he was sent as the USSR Ambassador to Canada, where he stayed for 10 years. In 1983, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee M.S. Gorbachev, after his trip to Canada, insisted on his return to Moscow. From 1983 to 1985 he worked as director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1984 he was elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In the summer of 1985, he was appointed head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1986, he was elected a member of the CPSU Central Committee, secretary of the Central Committee, and was responsible for issues of ideology, information and culture. At the January (1987) plenum of the CPSU Central Committee he was elected a candidate member of the Politburo, at the June (1987) plenum - a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee. Since September 1987, member of the Politburo Commission, and since October 1988, chairman of the Politburo Commission of the Central Committee for additional study of materials related to the repressions of the 1930-1940s and early 1950s.

In March 1988, the newspaper “Soviet Russia” signed by Nina Andreeva published a letter “I cannot give up principles,” which was perceived by wide circles of the public as a signal for the restoration of Stalinism. By decision of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Yakovlev organized the preparation of an editorial in the newspaper Pravda (published on April 5, 1988), which confirmed the CPSU's policy of perestroika.

At the XIX All-Union Party Conference (1988), a Commission was created to prepare a resolution on glasnost, headed by A.N. Yakovlev, who presented a document that consolidated the gains of perestroika in the field of freedom of speech. At the September (1988) plenum of the CPSU Central Committee, the responsibilities of the secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee were redistributed, and Yakovlev became chairman of the CPSU Central Committee Commission on International Politics.

Member of the Communist Party from 1944 to August 1991, member and secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (1986-1990), member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee (1987-1990). In 1995-2000 Chairman of the Russian Party of Social Democracy.

Biography

Childhood

Born on December 2, 1923 in the village of Korolevo, Yaroslavl province (now Yaroslavl district, Yaroslavl region).

In 1938-1941 he studied at school in the village of Krasnye Tkachi.

War participant

Participant of the Great Patriotic War. He served as a private in an artillery unit, a cadet at a military rifle and machine gun school, and then as a platoon commander on the Volkhov Front as part of the 6th Marine Brigade. In August 1942 he was seriously wounded. He was in the hospital until February 1943, after which he was demobilized due to disability.

Education

In 1946, Yakovlev graduated from the history department of the Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute. K. D. Ushinsky. He worked for the Yaroslavl regional newspaper “Severny Rabochiy”. In the 1950s, after moving to Moscow, he was sent to the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, where he studied in graduate school in 1956-1959 at the department of international communist and labor movement. From 1958 to 1959 he trained at Columbia University (USA)

In 1960, he graduated from graduate school at the Academy of Social Sciences under the Central Committee of the CPSU, defended his thesis on the topic: “Criticism of American bourgeois literature on the issue of US foreign policy 1953-1957.” In 1967, he defended his doctoral dissertation on the topic: “US Political Science and the Basic Foreign Policy Doctrines of American Imperialism (A Critical Analysis of Post-War Political Literature on the Problems of War, Peace and International Relations 1945-1966).” In 1969, Yakovlev was awarded the title of professor in the department of general history.

Since 1984, Yakovlev has been a corresponding member (Department of Economics, specialty “World Economy and International Relations”), and since 1990 a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the Russian Academy of Sciences) in the Department of World Economy and International Relations.. Honorary Doctor of Durham and Exeter Universities ( UK), Soka University (Japan), awarded an honorary Silver Medal from the University of Prague.

Party work

From 1946, for two years, Yakovlev worked as an instructor in the propaganda and agitation department of the Yaroslavl regional committee of the CPSU, then, until 1950, as a member of the editorial board of the regional newspaper Severny Rabochiy. In 1950, he was appointed deputy head of the propaganda and agitation department of the Yaroslavl regional party committee, and the following year - head of the schools and universities department of the same regional party committee. In 1953, Yakovlev was transferred to Moscow. From March 1953 to 1956, Yakovlev worked as an instructor of the CPSU Central Committee - in the schools department; in the department of science, schools and universities. From April 1960 to 1973, he again worked in the apparatus of the CPSU Central Committee (in the propaganda department of the Central Committee) - alternately as an instructor, head. sector, from July 1965 - first deputy head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee (the appointment was signed by Brezhnev), for the last four years he served as head of this department. At the same time (from 1966 to 1973) he was a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Communist”.

He was at the origins of organizing the second program of the All-Union Radio - Radio Station "Mayak", which began broadcasting in 1964. In August 1968, he was sent to Prague, where, as a representative of the Central Committee, he observed the situation during the entry of troops of the Warsaw Pact countries into Czechoslovakia. Returning to Moscow a week later, in a conversation with L. I. Brezhnev, he spoke out against the removal of A. Dubcek.

In the late 1960s - early 1970s. advocated the development of sociology as a science in the USSR, in particular, supported the activities of Yu. A. Levada, B. A. Grushin and T. I. Zaslavskaya.

In 1983, member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee M. S. Gorbachev visited Canada, renewed acquaintance with Yakovlev, and then insisted on his return to Moscow.

In 1984, Yakovlev was elected to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. In the summer of 1985 he became head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1986 he became a member of the CPSU Central Committee, secretary of the Central Committee in charge of issues of ideology, information and culture, at the June (1987) plenum - a member of the Politburo, in 1989 - a people's deputy of the USSR.

Director of IMEMO

In 1982, Academician Inozemtsev (at that time director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations) died.

Yakovlev’s candidacy was proposed by M. S. Gorbachev, “who became closely acquainted with him during the preparation of his visit to Canada on May 17-24, 1983.” With the support of the then General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Yu. V. Andropov, K. U. Chernenko and A. A. Gromyko, also with the assistance of P. N. Fedoseev, A. M. Alexandrov and G. A. Arbatov in May 1983 appointed director of IMEMO.

From 1983 to 1985, Yakovlev served as director of the IMEMO Academy of Sciences of the USSR. During this period, the institute sent a note to the CPSU Central Committee on the advisability of creating enterprises in the USSR with the participation of foreign capital, and a note to the USSR State Planning Committee about the impending economic crisis and the deepening lag of the USSR from developed Western countries.

Ideologist of perestroika

Critics cite various negative assessments of Yakovlev, accusing him of betraying the “Soviet homeland”, deliberately weakening and collapsing the Soviet system and the CPSU. Ex-chairman of the KGB of the USSR Vladimir Kryuchkov in his book “Personal Business” (1994) wrote:

Responding to accusations of “anti-patriotism,” Yakovlev, in particular, said in an interview with Novye Izvestia on April 8, 2004, entitled “No need to shout about love for the Motherland”: “Patriotism does not require noise. This, if you like, is to a certain extent an intimate matter for everyone. Loving your country means seeing its shortcomings and trying to convince society not to do what it shouldn’t do.” Yakovlev himself defined the period 1985-1991 as a social reformation, which had the goal of liberating social forces for new historical creativity.

In 2001, Yakovlev, recalling his activities, admitted: “In the early stages of perestroika, we had to partially lie, be hypocritical, dissemble - there was no other way. We had to - and this is the specificity of the restructuring of the totalitarian system - to break the totalitarian communist party."

In the introductory article to the publication of The Black Book of Communism in Russian, Yakovlev spoke about this period:

In 2003, Yakovlev said that back in 1985 he proposed a plan for changes in the country to Gorbachev, but Gorbachev replied that it was “too early.” According to Yakovlev, Gorbachev did not yet think that “it was time to end the Soviet system.” Yakovlev also noted that he had to overcome strong resistance from part of the party apparatus and

In the summer of 1985, Yakovlev became head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee. In 1986, he became Secretary of the Central Committee, overseeing, together with E.K. Ligachev, issues of ideology, information and culture. He advocated the full development of relations with Western countries, as well as with the countries of the Asia-Pacific region and the Middle East (in particular, with Israel).

In 1989 he was elected people's deputy of the USSR. At the Second Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in December 1989, Yakovlev made a report on the consequences of the signing of the Non-Aggression Treaty between the USSR and Germany in 1939 (the “Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”) and the secret protocols to it. The congress adopted a resolution (after a second vote) that for the first time recognized the existence of secret protocols to the pact (the originals were found only in the fall of 1992) and condemned their signing.

On May 7, 1991, the newspaper “Soviet Russia” published an open letter “Architect at the Ruins” by Gennady Zyuganov, addressed to Yakovlev, which contained sharp criticism of the policies of Perestroika.

From March 1990 to January 1991 - member of the Presidential Council of the USSR. The day after his appointment to this post, he submitted an application to resign from the Politburo and resign from his duties as Secretary of the Central Committee. At the XXVIII Congress of the CPSU he refused to be nominated for the post of General Secretary. After the dissolution of the Presidential Council, he was appointed senior adviser to the President of the USSR. He resigned from this post on July 29, 1991, having disagreed with Gorbachev in the vision of the prospects of the Union (Yakovlev advocated a confederation). In July 1991, he created, together with E. A. Shevardnadze, an alternative to the CPSU, the Movement of Democratic Reforms (DDR). On August 16, 1991, he announced his resignation from the CPSU.

During the August 1991 putsch, he supported the Russian government and B. N. Yeltsin, who opposed the coup attempt organized by V. A. Kryuchkov and other members of the State Emergency Committee. At the end of September 1991, he was appointed State Advisor for Special Assignments and a member of the Political Advisory Council under the President of the USSR. In December 1991, at the Founding Congress of the Movement of Democratic Reforms (MDR), he publicly opposed the signing of the Belovezhskaya Accords.

After perestroika

After the collapse of the USSR, from January 1992 he served as vice president of the Gorbachev Foundation. At the end of 1992, he was appointed chairman of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression and did a lot of work in this direction. In 1993-1995, he also headed the Federal Television and Radio Broadcasting Service and the State Television and Radio Company Ostankino. Since 1995, he has been Chairman of the Board of Directors of ORT. Since 1995, Chairman of the Russian Party of Social Democracy.

He called for a trial of the Bolshevik regime and sharply opposed anti-Semitism, considering it a shameful phenomenon for Russia. He was criticized by the nationalist and communist press, who accused him of Russophobia and treason. In February 1993, he was accused by ex-KGB Chairman V.A. Kryuchkov of “unauthorized contacts” with foreign intelligence, but after a special investigation conducted by the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Foreign Intelligence Service, all charges were dropped.

He headed the International Foundation "Democracy" (Alexander N. Yakovlev Foundation), in which he prepared volumes of historical documents for publication, the International Foundation for Charity and Health and the Leonardo Club (Russia). In January 2004 he became a member of the “Committee 2008: Free Choice”. On April 28, 2005 he joined the supervisory board of the public organization Open Russia. On February 22, 2005, he signed an open letter calling on the international human rights community to recognize the former head and co-owner of YUKOS as a political prisoner.

Funeral

Died October 18, 2005. The civil memorial service took place on October 21 in the building of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was buried at Troekurovskoye Cemetery in Moscow.

Bibliography

The ideology of the American “empire”, M., 1967.
Pax Americana. Imperial ideology; origins, doctrines M., 1969.
From Truman to Reagan. Doctrines and realities of the nuclear age. M., 1984.

After the start of perestroika, Yakovlev published the books “Realism - the Land of Perestroika”, “The Pain of Reading Being”, “Preface. Collapse. Afterword", "Bitter Cup. Bolshevism and the Reformation in Russia”, “By relics and oils”, “Comprehension”, “Sev of the Cross”, political memoirs “Pool of Memory. From Stolypin to Putin”, “Twilight” and dozens of articles. They contain the author's interpretation of the Soviet experience, analysis of the theoretical and practical aspects of democratic transformations in Russia. Executive editor of the collection “Russia and the USA: diplomatic relations, 1900-1917. Documents" (1999). Under his editorship, a multi-volume publication “Russia. XX century Documentation".

"1941" in 2 books. Series “Russia XX century. Documentation". (Under the general editorship of Yakovlev).
Publisher: Mainland, 2005 672 pages ISBN 5-85646-147-9
Alexander Yakovlev: Freedom is my religion. Collection. - M.: Vagrius, 2003. - 352 p., ill. - 1500 copies.

These days, our country is celebrating one of the most controversial anniversaries in its recent history - the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Scientists and eyewitnesses of those events are trying to thoroughly reconstruct the circumstances that preceded the collapse of the greatest world power. And in the course of these memories, real revelations and sensations emerge.

In particular, Valentin Falin, former secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, made an interesting admission not long ago.

Speaking at one of the scientific seminars dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Valentin Mikhailovich spoke about a conversation that happened during the years of perestroika between the then KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov and the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Mikhail Gorbachev.

Kryuchkov reported to the Secretary General about the suspicious activities of Gorbachev’s closest associate, Alexander Yakovlev. The head of the KGB then directly stated that Yakovlev was working for the Americans and that his recruitment took place back in 1959, when he was interning in the United States.

Gorbachev’s answer simply shocked the head of the KGB: “Is Yakovlev a useful person for perestroika? If it is useful, then we will forgive it. Which of us did not have sins in our youth..."

And soon, not without Yakovlev’s active participation, the Soviet Union collapsed. Thus, the KGB's operational information about the high-ranking traitor finally disappeared somewhere in the depths of the former party archives...

National Danger Agent

However, Vladimir Kryuchkov was not going to calm down. Even while in retirement, he continued to talk about Yakovlev’s betrayal and published articles on this matter in the opposition press. And not only him! Kryuchkov’s information was publicly confirmed by other KGB generals - in particular, Yevgeny Pitrovanov and Viktor Chebrikov, who at one time occupied important positions in the system of Soviet state security and foreign intelligence.

And here’s what the famous Moscow journalist Evgeny Zhirnov recalled about it:

“The first talk that I heard about the former member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, and at that time a member of the Presidential Council of the USSR, Alexander Yakovlev, being subject to some kind of state security check was in 1990... Then the editorial office was flooded with people dissatisfied with the policies of the party and government officers of the Soviet army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB, who, in the spirit of glasnost that reigned at that time, wanted to make public their opinion about the situation in the country. Along the way they said many other interesting things. An operative from the First Main Directorate of the KGB (intelligence), for example, said that he was looking for foreign property of Yakovlev and USSR Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze. He claimed that, according to the data available to the PSU, both bought real estate with funds received from the Americans. The officer claimed that he was able to discover plantations owned by Shevardnadze in South America. And they continue to search for Yakovlev’s property.”

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Zhirnov collected all the spy rumors circulating around Yakovlev and decided to take them to visit the hero himself. The journalist expected that Yakovlev would either turn everything into a joke or simply kick him out. But the reaction of the former Politburo member was unexpected:

“Yakovlev turned terribly pale and said that he knew nothing of this. Then he called the secretary and asked to bring a copy of the report of the Russian prosecutor’s office on the charges brought by Kryuchkov - about the absence of corpus delicti in his actions... What he was more afraid of - a new round of scandal or something else, I can’t judge.”

In general, it became clear that something was definitely fishy here...

Spy, get out

Before his memorable internship in the United States, the career of Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev was quite ordinary, like thousands of his other Soviet peers who chose the party political path - a pedagogical institute in the city of Yaroslavl, work as a journalist in the regional Komsomol newspaper, transition to party work. In the early 50s, Yakovlev was already in Moscow, where he entered the Academy of Social Sciences under the CPSU Central Committee, to the department of the international communist and labor movement. From this department in 1958, in a group of young graduate student interns, he was sent to the USA to study at the famous Columbia University...

How exactly and where the Americans recruited him, we will probably never know now. Most likely, the motives that pushed him to betray his Motherland were similar to the reasons for betrayal on the part of many other Soviet citizens - shock at the sight of the rich Western world and a passionate desire to live with no less material scope. And since American intelligence has always demanded that our people provide certain espionage services for the opportunity to become part of the Western world, Yakovlev, apparently, did not escape the common fate - he pledged to work for the interests of the United States.

It must be said that the Americans did not miscalculate. They recruited a very intelligent man, who was also very promising in terms of a party career. For immediately after returning to the USSR, Yakovlev became an employee of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee. Judging by the surviving documents of that era, he showed extraordinary zeal in exposing and eradicating any “ideological sedition” that deviated even in the slightest from the principles of the party.

It is not surprising that he was soon noticed by Mikhail Suslov himself, the main party ideologist. This man deserves special mention. It was this dense communist fanatic who turned Marxism-Leninism from a creatively developing science, as it was under Lenin and Stalin, into a kind of almost religious dogma, where everything was proposed to be taken on faith, without any discussion or debate. Very quickly, the communist idea lost its attractiveness even among citizens of the USSR, which became one of the prerequisites for the death of the world's first socialist state.

And under the wing of the illiterate dogmatist Suslov, a great many outright scoundrels divorced, who successfully made a career for themselves on Suslov’s “reinforced concrete” ideology! Among them was Yakovlev, who, according to eyewitnesses, even after the collapse of the USSR invariably spoke of his benefactor with great admiration...

True, in 1972 an incident happened to Yakovlev. He published a long article in Literaturnaya Gazeta entitled “Against Anti-Historicism,” in which he attacked Russian rural writers who advocated for the preservation of the national way of life and opposed the collapse of the Russian village. Alexander Nikolaevich, trumping official party phraseology, called the writers “Russian nationalists and chauvinists” who supposedly have no place in international Soviet society.

But the party propagandist received an unexpected rebuff. The writers complained about Yakovlev’s slander to the Central Committee. Among those who were outraged was Mikhail Sholokhov, who went all the way to Leonid Brezhnev himself. They say that Brezhnev at a meeting of the Politburo said the following about Yakovlev: “This rogue wants to quarrel us with the Russian intelligentsia.” And the life of the ideologist again took a sharp turn.

Two is too much

Brezhnev's words meant certain disgrace. Usually, after such words, a person was either kicked out of party work altogether, or sent forever as an ambassador to some third-rate country like Mongolia. Yakovlev went as ambassador. But not to Mongolia, but to quite prosperous Canada - Suslov continued to patronize his favorite and tried to do everything so that he could sit out the wrath of his superiors in a cushy place until better times...

It was at this very time that the KGB began to receive information about Yakovlev’s possible connections with Western intelligence services. Thus, a security officer from our embassy in Canada reported to Moscow that he had met with his source of information from among influential British businessmen. And this source warned the special officer: “Be careful with your new ambassador. Apparently he works for us."

At the same time, the KGB recorded the wide lifestyle that Yakovlev led. Very expensive things began to regularly appear in his possession, which simply could not fit into the official monetary income due to the Soviet ambassador. In addition, Alexander Nikolaevich regularly made incomprehensible and secret visits to Western politicians, without even coordinating them with either the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the KGB.

Although there was still no direct espionage evidence against him. But indirect ones have accumulated - more than enough! At the end of the 70s, KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov, at one of the Politburo meetings, raised the issue of Yakovlev and proposed, under any pretext, to remove him from his position. But here Suslov’s longtime patron stood up for the spy. He looked sternly at Andropov and said: “And Comrade Yakovlev was appointed to the post of ambassador not by the KGB, but by the party.” This was enough for the storm clouds to bypass Yakovlev: the elders from the Politburo always strictly ensured that state security did not interfere in their party affairs...

It is not surprising that, having received such an indulgence, Yakovlev actually did not hide anything and was not embarrassed by anyone. In May 1983, he organized a visit to Canada by the then Secretary of the Central Committee for Agriculture, Mikhail Gorbachev. Yakovlev not only accompanied the agricultural secretary, but also organized a series of meetings with influential persons in the Western world, secret from the Soviet leadership. Among them was Canadian Prime Minister Paul Trudeau, a confidant of US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Apparently, it was then that the Westerners managed to draw the talkative and narrow-minded Gorbachev into their “nets,” and under him Yakovlev became a kind of “supervisor.”

Returning to Moscow after Canada, Alexander Nikolaevich made a dizzying career. With the assistance of numerous followers of Suslov, who had already died by that time, in just a few years he went from director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences to the main party ideologist and member of the Politburo! Not without his active participation, in March 1985, the party and the country were headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, who by that time was already an agent of Western influence. A kind of tandem was formed, which, under the guise of perestroika, which he himself proclaimed, began to vigorously disintegrate the Soviet Union.

And when the head of the KGB Kryuchkov came to Gorbachev with compromising materials on Yakovlev, it was a useless step - one Western agent simply did not want to offend another.

What is the lesson from all this? First of all, everyone must be equal before the law, without any exception. When, after Stalin's death, state security agencies were prohibited from interfering in the activities of the party and even initiating criminal cases against party functionaries, the CPSU began to decay at an unprecedented rate. Its ranks were rapidly replenished with untouchable bribe-takers, tyrants, amateurs, swindlers and real traitors, like the perestroika tandem. Even with convincing evidence in hand, law enforcement agencies could not bring all these figures to justice. Therefore, the question of the collapse of the great country was only a matter of time.

And one more important lesson. The ossified monopoly on the ultimate truth according to Suslov’s recipes also turned out to be a favorable environment for the breeding of scoundrels in power. For only hardened cynics, completely devoid of any normal human feelings, including love for their Motherland, can exist in such a musty atmosphere.

I wonder if the modern Kremlin remembers this?

In chapter

The sensational confession of the former head of the international department of the CPSU Central Committee, Valentin Falin, about the betrayal of the “architect of perestroika” Alexander Yakovlev, heard last week, once again forced people to talk about the controversial figure of the main ideologist of the USSR and his role in the collapse of the country. Meanwhile, there is reason to believe that, in contacting with representatives of foreign intelligence services, he only carried out the will of the highest leaders of the Soviet state - first Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, and then Mikhail Gorbachev.

First, a few words about what Alexander Yakovlev is actually famous for. He is called the “Architect of Perestroika” for a reason: it was Yakovlev who headed the commission at the 19th All-Union Party Conference that prepared the famous resolution “On Glasnost.” It was Yakovlev who was behind the sudden appearance of the “national liberation movement” in the Baltic states, which began the collapse of the USSR. In the summer of 1988, he went on visits to Riga and Vilnius, but there he met not so much with the leadership of the republics, but with the local university front. And in October of the same year, the Popular Front of Estonia, then the Popular Front of Latvia and the Lithuanian “Sąjūdis” simultaneously appeared on the political scene. It is Yakovlev who initiates the rewriting of modern history - he authored a scandalous report on the consequences of the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact). The report was heard at the Second Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in December 1989, despite the fact that the speaker never presented the “secret protocols to the pact” on the basis of which Yakovlev made his conclusions. They appeared only in 1992 and, according to historians, are nothing more than a hastily concocted fake. But at the same time, Yakovlev is making titanic efforts to build bridges between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Soviet state. It was he who contributed to the return of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra, Optina Hermitage and several monasteries to the Russian Orthodox Church. And in December 1991, Yakovlev unexpectedly opposed the signing of the Belovezhskaya Accords. So who exactly was he, this “architect of perestroika”?

Fulfilling Brezhnev's instructions, Yakovlev comes into contact with the British Foreign Office, and the head of the Soviet trade union delegation in Great Britain is unexpectedly met with mass protest demonstrations.

In 1973, Yakovlev left for Canada and was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary. And soon information arrives in Moscow: the ambassador is “in the pocket of the Americans.” According to Valentin Falin, “Yakovlev fell into the snare of the American intelligence services” much earlier - “during an internship at Columbia University in the USA.”

For a long time, no one could prove the fact of his cooperation with the Americans. And when this fact seemed to be established, they still did not arrest him - “for some reason, Andropov (at that time the chairman of the KGB of the USSR) ordered that Yakovlev be closely monitored, and, if the opportunity arises, recalled from Canada, but to the Central Committee apparatus , where he previously worked, should not be allowed in.” Yakovlev returned from Canada only in 1983, and he was indeed not allowed into the Central Committee apparatus - the same Andropov, already being Secretary General, appointed him to the post of director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations. But why? If the fact of cooperation with American intelligence services was established, then Yakovlev should have been assigned to a completely different place, much less comfortable. Valentin Falin believes that at that time Andropov still did not have enough evidence: “Already under Gorbachev, the KGB received documentary evidence of data compromising Yakovlev. I know about this from Vladimir Kryuchkov, who was instructed to meet with the defendant, outline the essence of the reports and see what the reaction would be. Yakovlev, according to Kryuchkov, did not utter a word and the question of what to report to the Secretary General was passed over in silence. After listening to Kryuchkov’s report, Gorbachev asked and answered himself: “Is Yakovlev a useful person for perestroika? If it is useful, then we will forgive it. Who didn’t have sins in their youth?!”

On this topic

New details have emerged about the situation with football player Alexander Kokorin. His agent recalled the current contract with Zenit and denied the report that the athlete would train with the reserve team of the St. Petersburg team.

And here’s what Vladimir Kryuchkov himself said about this: “I began to receive materials on Yakovlev that he had very unkind contacts... with someone. However, he was a member of the Politburo, and we had no right to double-check this literally stunning information. The situation was complicated by the fact that Yakovlev’s old connections suddenly and very seriously began to be confirmed.”

As a student at the Academy of Social Sciences, in 1957, as a student exchange student, the future “architect of perestroika” was sent for an internship at Columbia University. There he, according to Kryuchkov, “was noticed in establishing relations with American intelligence services. However, then he managed to present the matter as if he had done this in an effort to use the opportunity that had arisen to get materials important for the USSR from a closed library.”

Another KGB chairman, Viktor Chebrikov, recalled how Andropov once showed him a memorandum with which he went to Brezhnev. The note stated that Yakovlev spends much more money than he receives, moreover, the ambassador’s expenses are many times greater than the size of his representative fund, so “by all indications, he is an agent of American intelligence.”

Brezhnev read the report and told Andropov: “A member of the Central Audit Commission of the CPSU Central Committee cannot be a traitor.” And Andropov tore up the note. So, maybe the leaders of the state knew something about Yakovlev that only they could know? It is not for nothing that later Andropov himself, having headed the Soviet Union, not only did not send Yakovlev to jail as a traitor to the Motherland, but also appointed him to a very responsible post in the institute, which was considered basic for domestic intelligence (Yakovlev’s successor in the director’s chair was none other than future head of the Foreign Intelligence Service Yevgeny Primakov).

In the 60–70s, the so-called behind-the-scenes diplomacy began to take shape in the USSR and the USA. Its representatives carried out delicate instructions from state leaders, building bridges at the highest level. A prominent representative of this “behind-the-scenes diplomacy” was former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, whom Washington “hawks” even accused of spying for Moscow. As, indeed, Yakovleva - the KGB chairmen Chebrikov, Andropov and Kryuchkov. Perhaps Alexander Yakovlev was a kind of “Kissinger in reverse.” This version is supported by one story that Pyotr Shelest, a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, once told the author of this material.

In 1975, the head of Soviet trade unions, Alexander Shelepin, was scheduled to visit London on an official visit. By that time, the confrontation between him and Brezhnev had reached its climax. It must be said that at one time Shelepin and Brezhnev competed quite fiercely in the struggle for the position of Secretary General after Khrushchev’s resignation. Shelepin lost the fight, but almost did not lose his position in power: although he ceased to be the secretary of the Central Committee, he remained a member of the Politburo. In addition, he led trade unions, that is, he had a well-known financial and human resource. Brezhnev dreamed of getting rid of Shelepin, but there was no formal opportunity for him to do this.

And so, on the eve of his visit to London, Brezhnev asks Alexander Yakovlev to provide him with a certain favor. Although earlier, during the visits of Soviet leaders, it was quiet and quiet. Thus, Yakovlev managed to provoke an international scandal, Shelepin was removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee and deprived of his post in the trade unions. Brezhnev eliminated his longtime rival, whom he called only Iron Shurik.

In fact, the memorable conversation between Andropov and Brezhnev, during which the KGB chairman tore up the memo, took place after Shelepin’s resignation. The day before, a rare scandal at that time occurred at the Soviet embassy in Canada: 17 employees were simultaneously expelled for activities incompatible with the status of a diplomat. And at the Politburo, Andropov made another attempt to expose Yakovlev, first by removing him from his post as not being able to do his job. But the “gray eminence” of the party, Mikhail Suslov, unexpectedly stood up for the ambassador to Canada: “But the KGB did not appoint Comrade Yakovlev as ambassador,” he told Andropov. By the way, until the end of his days, the ardent anti-Soviet Yakovlev considered Mikhail Suslov, a communist to the core, an ideal state leader, which he admitted more than once.

But, as it turns out, the removal of Shelepin with the help of the British Foreign Ministry was by no means Yakovlev’s only secret mission. For example, none other than the future “architect of perestroika” provided, as they would now put it, “positive PR” for the removal of Nikita Khrushchev from the highest government post. Carrying out a personal order from Brezhnev, Yakovlev informed a number of Western ambassadors that Khrushchev was allegedly going to remove the provision on voluntary withdrawal from the Union of Republics from the USSR Constitution. He presented the then annexation of the Karelo-Finnish SSR to the Russian Federation as the beginning of the “centralization” of the Union. Meanwhile, in the West, already at that time they were planning to collapse the Soviet Union through the withdrawal of the union republics from it. So the sudden removal of the “centralizer” Khrushchev did not cause unnecessary foreign resonance.

Perhaps it is premature to assess the role of Alexander Yakovlev in modern history - thousands of pages of secret archives are waiting in the wings. Today one thing can be said: the role of the “architect of perestroika” in Soviet history was not at all as clear as both Alexander Yakovlev’s enemies and his supporters imagine it to be.

In 1960 he defended his candidate's dissertation, and in 1967 - his doctoral dissertation on the historiography of US foreign policy doctrines.

In the spring of 1989 A.N. Yakovlev was elected People's Deputy of the USSR from the CPSU. At the Second Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in December 1989, he made a report on the consequences of the signing in 1939 of the Non-Aggression Treaty between the USSR and Germany (“Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact”) and the secret protocols to it. The congress adopted a resolution recognizing the existence of secret protocols to the pact and condemning their signing.

From March 1990 to January 1991, member of the USSR Presidential Council. The day after his appointment to this post, he submitted a letter of resignation from the governing bodies of the CPSU Central Committee, but until the 28th Party Congress he continued to serve as Secretary of the Central Committee and member of the Politburo.

In 1984 he was elected a corresponding member, in 1990 - a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

After the dissolution of the Presidential Council, he was appointed to the post of senior adviser to the President of the USSR. Resigned from this post on July 27, 1991.

July 2, 1991, together with A.I. Volskiy, N.Ya. Petrakov, G.Kh. Popov, A.A. Sobchak, I.S. Silaev, S.S. Shatalin, E.A. Shevardnadze, A.V. Rutskoy Yakovlev signed an appeal to create the Movement of Democratic Reforms (DDR), and then joined its Political Council.

On August 15, 1991, the Central Control Commission of the CPSU recommended that Yakovlev be expelled from the ranks of the CPSU for speeches and actions aimed at splitting the party. On August 16, 1991, Yakovlev announced his resignation from the party.

On August 20, 1991, he spoke at a rally near the Moscow City Council building in support of the legitimate government, against the rebellion of the State Emergency Committee. At the end of September 1991, he was appointed adviser on special assignments and member of the Political Advisory Council under the President of the USSR.

In mid-December 1991, at the Founding Congress of the Democratic Reform Movement, he was elected one of the co-chairs of the DDR.

At the end of December 1991, he was present at the transfer of power from the President of the USSR M.S. Gorbachev to the President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin.

Since January 1992, he served as vice-president of the Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Science Research (Gorbachev Foundation).

At the end of 1992, he was appointed chairman of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression. The former commission under the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, which was also headed by Yakovlev, was limited in its activities to the study of political processes of the 1930-1950s. This time, the entire period of Soviet power was subject to investigation into the circumstances and policies of repression. During the work of the Politburo Commission of the Central Committee and the Commission under the President of Russia, more than four million citizens - victims of political repression - were rehabilitated.

At the same time, during 1993-1995, in accordance with the decree of the President of Russia, A.N. Yakovlev headed the Federal Television and Radio Broadcasting Service and the State Television and Radio Company Ostankino.

Yakovlev was given the titles of “architect of perestroika” and “father of glasnost”. From the very beginning of perestroika, Alexander Nikolaevich became the main target of chauvinist and Stalinist forces. Former KGB chairman, organizer of the 1991 rebellion V.A. Kryuchkov accused him of having connections with Western intelligence services. At Yakovlev's request, this accusation was investigated by the Prosecutor General's Office, which established that Kryuchkov's allegations were groundless.

In addition to working on the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression, Yakovlev was chairman of the Public Council of the newspaper “Culture”, honorary chairman of the Board of Directors of Public Russian Television (ORT) and co-chairman of the Congress of the Russian Intelligentsia. He headed the International Foundation for Democracy (Alexander N. Yakovlev Foundation), the International Foundation for Charity and Health and the Leonardo Club (Russia).

In 1995 he organized the Russian Party of Social Democracy (RPSD).

In 1996, he made an appeal to the Russian and world public about the need to try Bolshevism and investigate Lenin-Stalin crimes.

Yakovlev is the author of 25 books translated into English, Chinese, Latvian, German, Spanish, French, Czech, Japanese and other languages. After the start of perestroika, he published such books as “Realism - the land of perestroika”, “The agony of reading existence”, “Preface. Collapse. Afterword”, “Bitter Chalice”, “By Relics and Oils”, “Comprehension”, “Sev of the Cross”, memoirs “Peninsula”, “Twilight” as well as dozens of articles and hundreds of interviews. Under his editorship, a multi-volume publication “Russia. XX century Documents”, in which previously unknown documents of Soviet history were published for the first time.

A.N. Yakovlev was a member of the Moscow Writers' Union, was awarded an honorary doctorate from Durham and Exeter Universities (UK), Soka University (Japan), and was awarded an honorary Silver Medal from Charles University in Prague for scientific achievements.

A.N. Yakovlev was awarded the Order of the October Revolution, the Red Banner, the Red Star, the Patriotic War, 1st degree, Friendship of Peoples, “For Services to the Fatherland”, 2nd degree, three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor, the Order of the Russian Orthodox Church of St. Sergius of Radonezh, 3rd degree , Grand Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit (Germany), Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic, Order of Gediminas (Republic of Lithuania), Order of Three Crosses (Republic of Latvia), Order of Terra Mariana (Republic of Estonia) , Order of Bolivar (Venezuela), as well as many medals.

Wife - Nina Ivanovna Yakovleva (née Smirnova), two children - Natalia and Anatoly, six granddaughters and grandchildren (Natalia, Alexandra, Peter, Sergey, Polina, Nikolay), three great-grandchildren (Anna, Ksenia, Nadezhda).

Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev died on October 18, 2005 in Moscow, and was buried at the Troekurovsky cemetery.