Eminence grise. December 2 - 90 anniversary of the birth of the "architect of perestroika" A.N. Yakovleva
In the autumn of 1990, my friend and colleague from the Red Star, and then already the editor-in-chief of the Military History Journal, General Victor Filatov, frankly, did it by publishing in his monthly magazine the chapters from the odious Mein Kampf. This action strongly outraged German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and called Gorbachev. Say, we have for imprinting the writings of Hitler in jail, and you have respected their military journal. But now it will be a question of the man who always moved Gorbachev like a puppeteer with his puppets - about Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev.In TASS, where I worked as a war correspondent with the Minister of Defense, it was he who came to investigate and make a decision. The general called me to the office where his deputies were Anatoly Krasikov, Vyacheslav Kevorkov and the head of the Military-political editorial board Nikolay Komarov. It was to this “narrow circle of limited persons” that a member of the Presidential Council of the USSR expressed his stormy indignation. He said that the incident happened, in principle, unheard of, crying out of the ordinary. That such a disgrace should be given a proper rigid assessment by the Minister of Defense himself. This general should, of course, be demoted to the rank and file. But to drive out of the army - at least. And you need to do everything quickly - by tomorrow!
Not the first time I listened to Alexander Nikolaevich, and this happened in different audiences. Usually, he gave the impression of a mature, balanced, somewhere even a wise pastor, in a fatherly way of teaching the flock.
And here I went out of myself. Yes Filatov made a foolish thing. But why, in the days of that “publicity”, is it too nervous to rush to us from Old Square? Yes, and elementary it was possible to settle the situation in the Kremlin "turntable". Clever Vyacheslav Yervandovich, KGB general and former assistant Yu.V. Andropov, I interpreted everything objectively when we left the General's office. “Gorbachev’s power,” said Kevorkov, “is not just anemic and sluggish — no longer. The country therefore stands at the edge of the abyss, from which it breathes the icy breath of civil war, hunger and cold. A confused demagogic rattling society can only be brought to life by military force, which the Yukorlev nukers, Korotich types, have not yet been able to completely destroy. And then, as if by order, your friend Filatov was substituted. "Our gray cardinal" and embeds from all calibers in the military. For him, this is a great excuse to once again "lower" and put in place. Give this to Yazov. Let him not be nervous, he has support ... ".
Having gathered into a fist all the polite given to me by nature, I went to the Minister of Defense. Dmitry Timofeevich listened carefully to my report, scratched his head. “This is what,” he said, “it is necessary to write so that the sheep are intact and the wolves are full. That is, so that Mikhail Sergeyevich and Kohl were satisfied, but that I also did not sprinkle ashes on my head as much as Yakovlev craves. Yes, and Victor must be covered. You understood me?"
What is there not to understand. I prepared a speech for the marshal. He read it, something, I do not remember, corrected, and then says: “It’s not good in the preamble: Hitler and right there my name is. And let us, we will dissolve us of your hohlatskaya. Do you mind? ”-“ Even the mail is an honor. But it is not customary to indicate the name of a TASS correspondent in this kind of landmark publications. ”-“ Nothing, I'll call your Spiridonov. But at the same time I warn you that Yakovlev would not pick at my speech. He doesn’t really like our military brother. ”
It was in Dmitriy Timofeevich that the diplomat spoke. Because Alexander Nikolaevich with all his heart, fiercely and practically his entire adult life, hated the Soviet government, the party and all those structures that supported them. And he did so much for their collapse, like no other shifter from the highest echelon of Soviet and party power, including Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Shevardnadze, and the smaller ones - Sobchak, Burbulis, Popov, etc.
But Yakovlev did not particularly like the army and the KGB. In the so-called post-perestroika times, he spoke about this a lot and often.
Like any Soviet agitpolitpropovets, he was distinguished by heightened demagogicity, inert language and a complete lack of publicism. But at the same time, he possessed real revolutionary conspiracy. No joke, by his own admission, he understood in 1944 year: something is wrong with this power. And in subsequent years only strengthened in its conclusion. Moreover, he did everything in his power to overthrow the hated government. In this sense, Stirlitz is no good for Yakovlev, and not that he doesn’t worth his little finger.
Just think of some kind of a member of the Nazi Party with 1933, Standardsführer SS. Yes, our hero, through hard work, ostentatious and hypocritical diligence, was marshaling, demiurgists of the Soviet government, becoming a member of the Politburo! At the same time in every way undermining it.
“It all began with such a philosophical state as doubt in the sincerity of the speech of this or that Kremlin leader. After all, I participated in the writing of these speeches. And we all understood very well that much of what was written was bullshit. But not only we understood. An increasing number of people began to realize that we live a triple life: we think one thing, say another, and act on the third. The difficulty in what it was - how to translate these doubts and increasing protest into practical actions. At one time, I sympathized with dissidents. And I realized that the dissidents can not do anything. In the end, I came to one conclusion: this wild system can only be blown up from the inside, using its totalitarian spring - the party.
Using such factors as discipline and the confidence that the Secretary General had brought up over the years, to the Politburo: if the General says so, it means so. In addition, when Gorbachev came to the highest party post, we used the fact that all party leaders began their activities with broadcasting statements: about freedom (in the socialist sense, of course), about socialist democracy, that we have the highest culture , the best life, and if it wasn't for these damned imperialists, everything would be fine. So we started from all this. At the April plenum, it was all swallowed. Although there in the report already sounded the thesis about the freedom of social choice. Swallowed. There was a thesis on the development of democracy - in two or three cases without the epithet “socialist”. Swallowed. Glimpsed words about the initiative of people as a primacy, the basis of the development of society. Swallowed. The boasting to the wise leadership of the Communist Party was reduced. No one was indignant: how, everything is approved by the Politburo, therefore, that is how it should be; let the new general secretary talk, show what a wide guy he is; we will do something anyway.
When did orthodoxes get worried? In the 1987 year, after the January plenum, where we raised the question of alternative elections. It came to many then: they are digging for me, because they will not reelect me. After all, what is interesting is that the entire nomenklatura knew perfectly well that they would not be re-elected in free elections. And indeed, in the very first election, many secretaries of regional committees and regional committees were not elected. But this was only the very beginning ... ".
Let us return, however, to how Yakovlev smashed the backbone of the state — the army. Egor Ligachev’s assistant Valery Legostaev recalls: “Constantly being encouraged by his inner circle, in which Yakovlev had already played an important role, Gorbachev was looking for an excuse for reprisal against the opposition, as he believed, the leadership of the USSR Armed Forces. It was him who delivered him at school hours on the tail of his sports airplane Matthias Rust. As a result, Gorbachev, ruled by Yakovlev, put 150 generals and officers on trial. It was not only the leadership of the Air Defense Forces led by the Marshal that was displaced aviation Koldunov, but also the Minister of Defense, Marshal Sokolov, with all his deputies, the chief of the General Staff and his two first deputies, the commander in chief and chief of staff of the Warsaw Treaty Allied Forces, all the commanders of the military groups in Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, all the commanders fleets and all district commanders. In several districts, commanders were replaced repeatedly.
The wave of Gorbachev's purge, at least, the level of command of the divisions, and, perhaps, went even lower. As a result of the operation, the leadership of the Soviet army was virtually beheaded.
Somehow in the early days of June, Yakovlev appeared unexpectedly in my office in my office. The broad face of the rough face of the AN shone with a triumphant smile. He was in a frankly elevated, almost festive mood. Right from the threshold, triumphantly putting his palms out in front of him, he blurted out: "In! All hands are covered in blood! Elbows!" From the agitated explanations that followed, it turned out that my guest is returning from the next meeting of the Politburo, which held personnel disassembly in connection with the Rust case. The outcome of this meeting led Yakovlev to such an enthusiastic and victorious state. His hands were “in the blood” of the defeated foe. ”
"Remember the rallies" in defense of the army "a year ago? Remember posters dedicated to me? On one thing - I am in the perspective of the sight, with the inscription: “This time we will not miss!” And one more with the words: “Yakovlev is a CIA agent,” he said.
In the late eighties - early nineties in the country, only a lazy and so-called liberal did not say that Yakovlev was a CIA agent. The chairman of the KGB, Kryuchkov, stated this directly and many times. In his book "The Personal File," he writes that he even laid out irrefutable evidence before Gorbachev! When the same defense minister Yazov was asked, Yakovlev and Shevardnadze were not note-takers of the West, he shrugged his shoulders: “Yes, the devil knows him, although he may even be.”
It was really hard to learn. Yes, and what, in essence, is the difference: was Yakovlev an agent or wasn’t, if in life, as they say, he acted precisely as a real, exemplary agent. The West has never had such a powerful and powerful figure as this one.
“I was accused at all congresses and plenary meetings for six years that I, along with Shevardnadze and Gorbachev, ruined the communist movement. And in a sense, it is. We, two or three "non-stoned" from the Politburo, all the time had to make compromises. Here a little cajole, there is a little retreat. Unleash, we go further. And the situation developed forward. ”
He had a great biography that was brilliant according to Soviet canons. Born in the poorest peasant family of the Yaroslavl region. In the Great Patriotic War he fought on the Volkhov front - he commanded a platoon as part of the 6-th separate brigade of marines. He was badly wounded.
At the front he became a communist. After the war he graduated historical Faculty of Yaroslavl State Pedagogical Institute. K.D. Ushinsky. In parallel with his studies, he headed the department of military-physical training. He studied at the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU for a year. He worked in the newspaper "Northern Worker" in the Yaroslavl Regional Committee of the CPSU. Then - an instructor of the apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Thanks to the strongest double-namesake protagonist Shelepin, he trained at Columbia University in the United States with the future notorious KGB general Kalugin. Then he worked in various leadership positions in the CPSU Central Committee. He defended his Ph.D. and, in 1967, his doctoral dissertation on the historiography of US foreign policy doctrines, vigorously denouncing imperialism.
... For the first time, Yakovlev declared himself in the full voice of the fall of 1972 of the year, publishing in the Literary Gazette an article "Against anti-historicism." It contained a very significant credo of the author. “Enjoying the patriarchal way of life, the home-building mores - this is a speech against Lenin and his assessments of the peasantry. He who does not understand this, in essence, leads a dispute with the dialectic of Lenin's view of the peasantry, with the socialist practice of reorganizing the countryside, "is in direct conflict with Lenin." “With whom, in this case, are our zealots of the patriarchal village fighting, and where are they calling?” Citing a phrase from one book that the hero does not agree with Chernyshevsky’s words about Russians as “nations of slaves,” A. Yakovlev backlash “beat mob on tinsel”: “The controversy goes not only with Chernyshevsky, but also with Lenin”! In the same way, he dealt with any, even the most cautious attempts to say something good about Orthodoxy. "In many verses we meet with the chanting of churches and icons, and this is already a question not a poetic one." "We do not forget that under the arches of the temples the bayonets of the punishers were sanctified, they stifled the first Russian revolution ... the most" democratic "religion is ultimately reactionary, it is an ideology of spiritual slavery."
Then there was a huge, detailed list of the many names of the "Russian-speaking". The author did not forget about “leaven patriotism”, “chauvinism” and “anti-Semitism”. In a word, the article caused a flurry of indignation of the patriots.
The clever author was instantly sent as ambassador of the USSR to Canada for as many 10 years. And there, under the shade of a maple leaf, the Yaroslavl would wait for the pension if he had not met Gorbachev in time and could not charm the latter. The future “messiah from perestroika” convinced Secretary General Andropov: a great guru is sitting in Canada and urgently needs to be returned for great things.
Years later, Yakovlev will “thank” both his patrons: “Yuri Andropov is a cunning, cunning and highly experienced person. Nowhere really studied. The organizer of moral repression, constant pressure on the intelligentsia — exile, expulsion, prisons, mental hospitals. ”
“Mikhail Sergeyevich really ... with personnel errors, he always surprised me, I must say. A stupid man, quite educated, well-read. There is also a political instinct. But what is a mystery to me - absolutely did not understand people. For example, Kravchenko was not suitable for him as chair of the State TV and Radio Company. And at the presidential council voted against. And he: "Well, whatever you want - but I still appoint."
As for Yakovlev himself, he was undoubtedly a great dock in the frames. Alexander Nikolayevich unmistakably knew how to find suitable people who later became Stakhanov and helped him in destroying the “evil empire”.
So in the summer of 1991, he, together with A.I. Volsky, N.Ya. Petrakov, G.Kh. Popov, A.A. Sobchak, I.S. Silaev, S.S. Shatalin, E.A. Shevardnadze, A.V. Rutskim signs an appeal on the creation of the Movement for Democratic Reforms (DDR) and is included in its Political Council. And at different times, his closest assistants were: Vitaly Korotich, Vasily Aksenov, director Yuri Lyubimov, oligarch Boris Berezovsky, traitor Oleg Kalugin ... Yakovlev personally appointed editors of Moscow News"," Soviet Culture "," Izvestia ", the magazines" Twinkle "," Banner "," New World "- that is, the entire perestroika clip of the media. In the future, it was these publications that became the mouthpiece of the “perestroika” - read the destructive ideology.
In the summer of 1985, Yakovlev becomes head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee. At the June (1987) plenary session, he was elected a member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee - chairman of the Commission of the Politburo of the Central Committee on additional study of materials related to repression. From that moment on, Alexander Yakovlevich takes almost all the reins of the multi-armed and multi-faced monster, who was nourished by international imperialism, and which was called upon to destroy, destroy the socialist country, party, army, KGB, to break all other government bonds. In those years, a similar conclusion would have laughed. And today we see: this is exactly how it was.
Ubiquitous battles against the system were, of course, numerous Yakovlev landsknechts. But in crucial, crucial moments of the battle, the corresponding member took the initiative.
So he personally smashed Nina Andreeva in the newspaper “Soviet Russia” with the symbolic title “I can’t sacrifice principles”. (I share with all the principal!) He personally made a report on the consequences of the non-aggression treaty between the USSR and Germany (the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) and the secret protocols to it in 1939 year. He also promoted the “Katyn case”, which became the key to Poland’s endless and permanent claims on Russia and the full legalization of Polish hatred towards Russians. And the titanic work of the disprovers bore the corresponding fruits. At the very end of December 1991, under the supervision of Yakovlev, there was a transfer of power from the President of the USSR, MS Gorbachev President of Russia B.N. Yeltsin. Alexander Nikolaevich had the full and legal right to take a breath. To the journalist's question: whether he and his “ward” Gorbachev think about going back to big-time politics, now the academician imposingly replied: “Why? The opportunity is very small. This can only be an accident, not a pattern. I think working with the Foundation, Mikhail Sergeyevich and I will bring more benefit to the country. ” An, there it was!
“People often ask me: did we think when we started restructuring, what would be the result? Do you agree with what is happening now? My answer is this: no one, including us, could have foreseen, painted by the day what would happen. But ideally, of course, our Reformation, the great Reformation, did not imply such a sharp decline in the living standards of the people. And, of course, it never occurred to anyone, for me personally, for example, that democratization in itself, or rather the establishment of democratic procedures, will lead to such a sharp clash of authorities. I still did not think that, despite the most brutal resistance to the reformation, the front of the resisting would be so extensive, and the resistance so long. It seemed to me that the word “freedom” and the organizational form rising above it — democracy will take over the person, will carry it away. And for the sake of this, people may suffer material hardships, go to self-restraint, pacify their ambitions. It seemed that under the onslaught of circumstances, even evil would somehow moderate itself. In other words, I was, in fact, a romantic. But a romantic who builds his ideas on the assumptions of the fundamental plan: human nature, his eternal desire for freedom, democracy, self-expression, initiative ... Probably, in all of our reform efforts, we underestimated the dependent character of society, the infection of the huge mass of people with lumpenism ... They underestimated lumpenism as a phenomenon. ”
Well, of course, the people in everything was guilty. Not appreciated Yaroslavl romance. And he again rushed into battle to correct him.
He became chairman of the Rehabilitation Commission for Victims of Political Repression. The former, under the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, was not enough for him. I wanted to dig under the entire Soviet period. At the same time he headed the television and radio company Ostankino. (It was with him that our television began to turn both in form and in content into the trash!). He also became chairman of the Board of Directors of ORT, co-chair of the Congress of the intelligentsia of Russia. He headed the funds "Democracy", mercy and health, a certain club "Leonardo". This was not enough, so he organized the Russian Party of Social Democracy. The crown of all the bustling activities of the unusually prolific agitpolitpropovets was the appeal to the Russian and world public about the need for trial of Bolshevism and the investigation of Leninist-Stalinist crimes. And then we are surprised that Western countries make us rewrite history!
Diligent efforts of Yakovlev to humiliate his own country are appreciated in the West. He was awarded a large officer's cross of the Order of Merit (Germany), the Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit for the Republic of Poland, the Order of Gediminas (Republic of Lithuania), the Order of Three Crosses (Republic of Latvia), the Order of Terra Mariana (Republic of Estonia) ). Of course, Gorbachev is far away in terms of awards. Well, so the man fought on the invisible front.
Yakovlev is the author of 25 books translated into many languages. “The torments of perusal of being”, “Preface. Collapse Afterword, Bitter Bowl, Relics and Firs, Comprehension, Krestosev, The Memory Pools, Twilight ... But among those written, the Black Book of Communism stands out: “I studied a lot and corrosively 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. Long ago, more than 40 years ago, I realized that Marxism-Leninism is not a science, but journalism is cannibalistic and Samoyed. Since I lived and worked in the highest "orbits" of the regime, including the highest one - in the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU under Gorbachev, I was well aware that all these theories and plans were nonsense, and the main thing on which the regime rested was nomenclature apparatus, personnel, people, actors. Figures were different: smart, stupid, just fools. But all were cynics. One and all, and I - including. Publicly prayed to the false Kumir, the ritual was holiness, true convictions - kept to yourself. After the 20th Congress, we often discussed the problems of democratization of the country and society in the super-narrow circle of our closest friends and like-minded people. They chose a simple, like a sledgehammer, method of propagating the "ideas" of the late Lenin. A group of true and not imaginary reformers developed (of course, orally) the following plan: Lenin's authority to strike at Stalin, at Stalinism. And then, if successful, Plekhanov and Social Democracy beat Lenin, liberalism and "moral socialism" - revolutionaryism in general. The Soviet totalitarian regime could be destroyed only through publicity and totalitarian discipline of the party, while hiding behind the interests of improving socialism. Looking back, I can proudly say that the ingenious, but very simple tactic — the mechanisms of totalitarianism against the system of totalitarianism — worked. ”
Solzhenitsyn also fought against totalitarianism. How could he, fought against the system, but for Russia and its disadvantaged people. Yakovlev, on the other hand, surreptitiously fought against socialism, and against the country, and against its confused people.
It is simply amazing that such a powerful, extraordinary mind was spent by man solely for evil and hatred. They literally feed every line of the numerous essays of this sharpened misanthrope. It is enough just to read the titles of his works - completely black, despondent and hopeless. But millions of people even then lived, loved, worked, raised children, defended their homeland.
A former colleague of Yakovlev in the Politburo, the chairman of the KGB of the USSR Kryuchkov admitted that Alexander Nikolayevich never recalled anything good from his past life. Or - caustically, derogatory, or - with hatred. He never loved “this unwashed country,” and from the long full life abroad, he was physically just to animals, and hated her to colic. Sometimes I even feel sorry for him, who has gone to another world, without having experienced any joy from his long life in the world of this sublunary. Which, of course, was different under socialism. But more often still beautiful. There is no other way for the world to be ...
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