Alexander Yakovlev: The Man Whose Ideas Delivered Russia from Communism(NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies)

A significant political figure in twentieth-century Russia, Alexander Yakovlev was the intellectual force behind the processes of perestroika (reconstruction) and glasnost (openness) that liberated the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe from Communist rule between 1989 and 1991. Yet, until now, not a single full-scale biography has been devoted to him. In his study of the unsung hero, Richard Pipes seeks to rectify this lacuna and give Yakovlev his historical due. Yakovlev's life provides a unique instance of a leading figure in the Soviet government who evolved from a dedicated Communist and Stalinist into an equally ardent foe of everything the Leninist-Stalinist regime stood for. He quit government service in 1991 and lived until 2005, becoming toward the end of his life a classical western liberal who shared none of the traditional Russian values. Pipes's illuminating study consists of two parts: a biography of Yakovlev and Pipes's translation of two important articles by Yakovlev. It will appeal to specialists and students of Soviet and post-Soviet studies, government officials involved with foreign policy, and general readers interested in the history of Russia and the Soviet Union.

About the Author :
Richard Pipes is the Baird Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous publications, including Communism, Russia under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution, and Property and Freedom.

Review :
Richard Pipes has written an important biography about a man whose contributions to the fall of communism have been downplayed both by his former boss and by today's Russian leaders, who view the Soviet collapse as an unmitigated catastrophe. (Survival: Global Politics and Strategy) Richard Pipes, the distinguished American historian of Soviet Russia, provides a notable scholarly and public service by writing [the] first biography that carefully follows every major stage in Yakovlev's career and political-ideological evolution. (The Washington Times) We are in Richard Pipes's debt for calling our attention to the man whose ideas helped transform his own country and world politics during the late 1980s and early 1990s. (The New York Review of Books) In this slim, highly provocative book, Richard Pipes engages in a much-needed exercise in historical reparation. We have here the first biography of an ideologue turned heretic and then apostate, whose ideas begot, to a decisive extent, the collapse of Lenin's state. In documenting Yakovlev's epiphany, Pipes makes a seminal contribution to the literature on disenchantment, apostasy, illumination, and awakening. (Times Higher Education)