Alexander Yakovlev – the Soviet theorist stopped believing in socialism

In April 1987, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, visited Czechoslovakia.

Like any trip to the countries of the socialist bloc, Gorbachev seeks to encourage the leaders of the host country to reform, following the model of perestroika and glasnost.

But in Prague, where Soviet troops brought tanks to suppress the 1968 reform movement, Gorbachev delicately did not mention the old story.

Before the Soviet leadership team left the capital of the Czechoslovak Union, a Western journalist asked Gorbachev’s spokesman:

– “What difference do you think is the 1968 reform of Alexander Dubcek and the idea of ​​reform (perestroika) and transparency (glasnost) that the Soviet Union is promoting today?”

– “19 different years”.

The Soviet spokesman’s response surprised Czechoslovak leaders, but was comforting to the opposition led by Vaclav Havel, who was last jailed from 1979 to 1983.

But a rethinking of Czechoslovakia and the failed 1968 reform of TBT Dubceck did not come spontaneously to Gorbachev.

The proponent of an alternative vision of Eastern Europe was Alexander Yakovlev, Gorbachev’s leading Soviet theorist.

The above story, narrated by Victor Sebestyen in ‘Revolution 1989 – The Fall of the Soviet Empire’, also talks about Yakovlev’s role in Gorbachev’s change of mind on foreign affairs.

In the book The Rise and Fall of Communism, Archie Brown writes that Alexander Yakovlev became the second most important figure in Gorbachev’s reform period in the Soviet Union.

“Yakovlev’s travels, his passage through the West had a strong impact on him,” and later, with Eduard Shevarnadze, Yakovlev helped Gorbachev, who rose from the local level in Russia, lacked international experience. , forming a vision of the world.

Alexander Nikolaievich Yakovlev (1923-2005) fought in the Great Patriotic War and after his demobilization he entered education.

In 1953, when Stalin died, Yakovlev was a professor at the Party School and fully believed in communism.

His ideals of Marxism-Leninism did not waver even during the period when the Soviet Union revealed Stalin’s crimes, but Yakovlev wanted to confront the idea of ​​socialism, including Marx and Engels. and contemporary English and French thinkers with the two ancestors of communism.

Continuing his studies in the theory of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in 1958 Alexander Yakovlev was chosen to study in the United States for a year.

Of the 17 people sent to the United States on a Fulbright scholarship that year, 14 were KGB officers, the rest were loyal Communist members, and they reported to the organization on all their activities.

At Columbia University, Yakovlev learned of Roosevelt’s New Deal program and began dreaming of a similar project to save Soviet-style socialism.

Upon returning to the Soviet Union, he did not lose his anti-American spirit, but he also published many articles analyzing the “bad and bad” things about US imperialism.

In 1968, the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact brought troops to Prague to capture the entire party leadership, along with TBT Alexander Dubcek, and dissolve the movement of workers and students who demanded “socialism with a human face.”

As deputy director of the Central Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Yakovlev was sent to Czechoslovakia to help draft the new leadership’s work agenda.

But in Prague, he realized for the first time that the Soviet Union could not permanently retain control of Eastern Europe by force: after the 1968 Prague incident, Soviet troops withdrew their combat units from the Czech capital, but they closed their doors. Slovakia reached the end of the Cold War.

Events in Eastern Europe (Poznan, Budapest 1956, Prague 1958, Gdansk 1970) pose a challenge to Moscow as to why the workers of the “comrade” country did not like the Soviet Union, the homeland of the owner. social meaning.

For Yakovlev, who observed first-hand what happened in Czechoslovakia, the main problem was that Eastern Europeans continued to distrust the Soviet Union as much as their parents hated the occupied Tsarist regime.

In 1972, as head of the powerful Central Propaganda Department, Yakovlev criticized Russian nationalism and the nationalism of the socialist bloc countries.

His main idea is that genuine proletarian internationalism cannot allow nationalism, including that of Russia, to overshadow “the common good.”

Surprisingly for Yakovlev, Leonid Brezhnev stripped him of his position in the Central Party and decided to “go into exile” abroad.

Alexander Yakovlev became a Soviet ambassador to Canada, where he was close to the family of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Mr. Trudeau named his second son Alexandre ‘Sasha’, to mark their friendship.

According to Victor Sebestyen, the mandate of ambassador to Canada has changed Yakovlev’s vision of capitalism.

The high-level Soviet theorist understood that in the capitalist economy and the impact of the market on cash, agricultural products had many different faces, not necessarily the same as the American model.

Still, he published a book condemning the “Canadian police state,” seeing it as something the United States “forced Canada to do,” despite admitting that Canada has agricultural advantages over the Soviet Union.

Yakovlev openly offered to learn how to manage and reform Canadian agriculture, and Party secretary in charge of agriculture, Mikhail Gorbachev, visited Canada in 1983.

During the trip, Mr. Gorbachev was accompanied by Yakovlev, who explained unknown things to Soviet officials.

Soon after, reformist OTC Yuri Andropov, who also held the KGB for 15 years in a row, called Yakovlev back to Moscow to be in charge of the Academy’s Institute of International and World Economic Relations (IMEMO). Soviet science.

His task was to draft new policies that would lay a theoretical foundation for the reformed Soviet Union.

When Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Party (1985), Yakovlev joined the Politburo (1987), in charge of Foreign Affairs, Culture and Thought.

According to Victor Sebestyen, a group of Gorbachev’s trusted associates, including Shevarnadze, Chernayev, and Shakhnarazov, shared the view that the Soviet Union needed to reform.

They studied the model of liberation of Deng Xiaoping in China and the organizational models of the European Communist Party and the Left Social Democratic Party.

The conclusion of Yakovlev and the Soviet leadership at the time was to reform the system while it was still active, before the crisis pushed them into a passive position.

However, the assessment of the Soviet Union in 1985-97 was in crisis or not entirely clear.

Some views want to choose the “Third way”, which in fact follows European democratic social lines.

Some continued to support the Soviet Union’s “elder” role with Eastern European countries, but said that to do so, the Soviet Union must take the lead in reform.

Mikhail Gorbachev even wanted Eastern European countries to have ‘mini Gorbachevs’ for their internal liberalization under COMECON and the Warsaw Pact.

Alexander Yakovlev believed that the Soviet Union should no longer intervene militarily in Eastern Europe, but should support the reform of the communist factions in those countries towards multi-party regimes.

Of course, he still believes that with the power of the highest values ​​of humanity, the Soviet Communist Party and the sister parties will continue to hold a strong position. Voting is just an opportunity for them to show their popularity.

In fact, the Eastern European problem was so stagnant that the Soviet Union and Eastern European leaders did not have time to “evolve” into a particular relationship.

When he took office, Gorbachev was informed that the ‘bill’ to maintain security (Soviet control) in Eastern Europe amounted to $ 10 billion a year (at 1985 prices – 30 billion in 2020). .

Furthermore, according to Victor Sebestyen’s book (p. 195), the economic cost that the Soviet Union had to spend to “subsidize” in order to help Eastern European countries to have a higher standard of living than the Union Soviet, is $ 30 billion / year (at 90 billion by 2020).

Therefore, the “non-interference” argument that Yakovlev defends comes not only from generosity, but also from reality.

The more it intervenes to “preserve Eastern Europe”, the greater the monetary burden on Moscow.

The economic reforms of Gorbachev and others did not save the Soviet budget in time.

As Gorbachev himself said, “the old system (planning) has collapsed and the market economy is not mature enough.”

Writers from the former Soviet Union compare Yakovlev’s journey of reasoning, from Leninism to Social Democracy, with that of the European left parties.

In the Western market economy with a pluralistic option, they could not persuade the masses to follow their children with an ideological monopoly, and all of these parties were engaged in the fight for equality with many. other parties.

On the other hand, the fundamental contradiction of the Soviet state, a “proletarian class” state, was the ruling apparatus that had become another class, a new ruling class.

In theory, the Soviet Union had to be the “most democratic society in the world”, but in reality it was as repressive as the Tsarist period, especially towards non-Russian peoples.

Soviet theorists always faced … “wrong” realities. Because society continually changes new predictions contrary to socialist theory.

The understanding of the above contradictions, especially after the 1968 Prague incident, made Yakovlev gradually become a Social Democrat.

The use of military means to ‘shape’ the reality of life in accordance with its limited law of ‘Marxism-Leninism’, within and outside the borders of the Soviet Union.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yakovlev became the leader of the Russian Party of Social Democracy, supporting President Boris Yeltsin.

However, his party has had little or no influence, but something in Moscow.

Yakovlev died in 2005 and goes down in European history as the “architect of perestroika”, the failed reform that ended the existence of the Soviet Union.

More information about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe:

Before Gorbachev, Soviet security leader Andropov ‘wanted reforms’

Covid-19 and the ‘immortal Soviet Union’ theory: