A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. English Language edition, Second printing [stated]. Trade paperback. Very good/No DJ issued. xvii, [1], 254 pages. Abbreviations. Notes. Index. Foreword by Paul Hollander. Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev (2 December 1923 ? 18 October 2005) was a Soviet and Russian politician, diplomat, and historian. A member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s, he was termed the "godfather of glasnost", and was the intellectual force behind Mikhail Gorbachev's reform program of glasnost and perestroika. Yakovlev served as a platoon commander of a marine brigade during World War II, and became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following the war. During the rule of Nikita Khrushchev, he studied abroad as part of the Fulbright Program, returning in 1960. Under Leonid Brezhnev, he became Deputy Head of Agitprop and was placed in charge of a group on creating the 1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union. He was later ambassador to Canada, in response to his opposition to ethnic nationalism within the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, Yakovlev returned to the Soviet Union, and became a prominent supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev's proposed reforms. In response to his perceived importance in the reforms, he came under attack from hardliners such as Alexander Lebed and Gennady Zyuganov, eventually resigning two days prior to the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt. During the coup attempt, Yakovlev was a supporter of pro-democratic forces, and later became a supporter of Boris Yeltsin before turning against his successor, Vladimir Putin, in response to democratic backsliding which occurred during Putin's presidency. The main architect of the concept of perestroika under Gorbachev, Alexander N. Yakovlev played a unique role in the transformation of the Soviet Union. Now, drawing on his own experiences and on his privileged access to state and Party archives, he reflects on the evils of the system that shaped the country he loves. Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev (1923 to 2005) was a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He would serve as Head of Ideology, and was the personal friend and confident of all the major figures of the era. Initially committed to the ideals of Soviet Socialism, Yakovlev slowly realized the system he upheld was guilty of monstrous crimes. He would later become head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression. This is Yakovlev's exposé of the violence of the regime to its people. It is a confrontational work, tackling head on both the perpetrators of the crimes, and modern day apologists for Soviet Russia. He chronicles in forensic detail the persecution on a vast scale of children, peasants, the intelligentsia, Jews, minorities, and fellow socialists. Yakovlev states grimly: "To descend step by step down seventy years of Bolshevik rule into a dungeon strewn with human bones and reeking of dried blood is to see your faith in humankind dissolve." A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia is one of the greatest political works ever written, ranking alongside Primo Levi's "If This is a Man", and Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipeligo"