Dr. Richard Pipes, doyed on American historians of Russia
NORTHERN ILLINOIS PRESS (Jiri was one of the two scholars selected by this publisher to review Dr. Pipes book).
REVIEW: ALEXANDER YAKOVLEV The Man Whose Ideas Delivered Russia from Communism RICHARD PIPES
“This book introduces readers to an extremely important historical figure of the twentieth century about whom very little has been written.”
—Jonathan Daly, author of Autocracy under Siege (NIU Press, 1998) and The Watchful State (NIU Press, 2004)
“The doyen of historians of Russia, Richard Pipes provides the first full biography of Alexander Yakovlev— the Russian Henry Kissinger to Gorbachev. Unlike Henry, however, Alexander was kept in the shadows by his boss. Using Yakovlev’s own writing, some available only in Russian, Pipes, Ronald Reagan’s adviser, opens a gold mine from which future historians and analysts will extract other precious nuggets.”
—Jiri Valenta, author of Soviet Intervention in Czechoslovakia, 1968: Anatomy of a Decision and co-author of Gorbachev’s New Thinking and Third World Conflicts.
PUBLISHER'S REVIEW
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. The main reason for this deliberate oblivion is that the communists regard Yakovlev as their bête noire, while the reformers prefer to give credit to Mikhail Gorbachev.
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 LeninistStalinist 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. This illuminating study consists of two parts: a biography of Yakovlev and Pipes’s translation of two important articles by Yakovlev.
ISBN 978-0-87580-494-1 $29.95 £21.00 €24.80 cloth 5.5 x 8.5 168 pages 12 illus.
Richard Pipes is the Baird Professor Emeritus of History at Harvard University. He is the author of numerous publications, including Communism: A History, Russia under the Old Regime, The Russian Revolution, and Property and Freedom.
Jiri was the principle reviewer of Pipes' book for the Northern Illinois Press. Watch for Leni and Jiri's own review.
We thank Dr. Pipes for his acknowledgment of these writers in his book. He wrote, "I also wish to thank Professor and Mrs. Jiri Valenta for giving me access to their unpublished interview with Alexander Yakovlev and offering useful suggestions."
