Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev
One of the main architects of perestroika, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev died on Tuesday. He was 81. Born in the village of Korolevo near Yaroslavl in 1923, Yakovlev was of the first generation reared under the Soviet system, and ironically, was instrumental in bringing its collapse. Like so many of his generation, he fought in the Great Patriotic War at 18 years old, where he sustained disabling wounds in 1943 fighting near Leningrad. He joined the Communist Party in 1944 and his Party membership gave him the opportunity to earn a doctorate in history from the Academy of Social Sciences in Moscow. Like so many ambitious Party members of his generation, Yakovlev was quickly shot up the State apparatus. When Khrushchev gave his “secret speech” denouncing Stalin’s cult of personality in 1956, he was a member of the Central Committee. In 1958 he studied at Columbia University as part of an ..read more
