Alexander Yakovlev : The Father of Perestroika Surveys Wreckage of Soviet Empire

Nearly seven years ago, Alexander N. Yakovlev drafted the first Kremlin policy papers for perestroika. Last week, he packed the last of his files into boxes, threw what did not fit into the wastebasket and left the Kremlin with the Soviet leader he had served, President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Yakovlev, 68, the philosopher-ideologist of Gorbachev’s reforms, has already been blamed by conservatives for the Soviet Union’s disintegration, for the abandonment of socialism and for the defeat of Marxism-Leninism in what less than a decade ago was still regarded as a world revolution.

But Yakovlev says he is not worried about how history will evaluate himself, perestroika or Gorbachev; he is at ease with the fundamental changes under way here. With the air of a theologian who has lost his own faith but still appreciates the power of religious belief, Yakovlev sees the end of Marxism and breakup of the Soviet Union as unleashing immense political energy.

What concerns him, Yakovlev stresses, are democracy’s potential failures--the growing dictatorship in the southern republic of Georgia, incipient despotism in the Central Asian republics, anti-Russian feelings in the Baltic states and no clear program of action from Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

A historian by training but a political philosopher of world class, Yakovlev had hoped to help navigate the Kremlin leadership through the huge transformation he felt was necessary to reform socialism as a political and economic system and to hold the Soviet Union together as a state.

In the end, he found Marxism so flawed that he argued strongly within Kremlin councils for a state no longer founded on socialism, for an end to the political monopoly of the Communist Party, for private ownership and, most of all, for the individual’s freedom of conscience that makes a person human.

All this earned Yakovlev the enmity of party conservatives once again; he had already been exiled to Canada for a decade as the Soviet ambassador after offending party bosses during the Brezhnev era. This time, he was edged out of the Gorbachev circle, and then, the week before the conservative coup d’etat last August, a party commission recommended his expulsion.

He laughs it all off. Invariably described as “owlish” because of his heavy glasses, round face and a hairline that has retreated down the sides of his head, Yakovlev has an engaging sense of humor, a readiness to recall anecdotes from his own life to illustrate his point and a knowledge of history that reminds him the Russian revolution was not the first, the last nor the best.

Question: Here we are at the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev and the end of socialism as we knew it in the Soviet Union. Is this what you wanted it to be? Is this what you wanted to accomplish with perestroika? Do you have regrets?

Answer: Here we have two questions, to which two answers can be given. The first question deals with socialism. I had my doubts about the efficiency of the system long ago. Another thing is what methods and means should have been used . . . to go over to a different road of development.

Even before perestroika-- and certainly at the beginning of it--I stood firmly for reforming and improving this system. I believed, for example, that under conditions of socialism, alternative and free elections were possible, too. I believed that the party should split into two parties and work competitively.

Secondly, I supposed that, alongside the state and collective farm system, other forms of farming should also be allowed. Thirdly, I thought that, under socialism, a broad spiritual freedom could exist.

The lack of all this I regarded as deformities of socialism. . . . But it turned out that it was possible to reform this system only partially. As soon as freedom and glasnost emerged, political pluralism came about, and talk began about the diversity of economic forms, specifically the forms of ownership.

The socialist system that existed in our country wouldn’t accept it and started to reject it, virtually like a body rejects an alien element. That entailed serious contradictions in the system. You see, when something new is being born in an old system, the old must die off, but this system did not die off in our country. On the contrary, the system not only made an attempt to save itself last August but to abort perestroika as well.

But this system failed to preserve itself, and, in the end, killed itself, although I don’t rule out a return to totalitarianism.

At the same time, perestroika-- the way it was--was killed in the August days, too. An essentially new stage began. We have yet to see what kind of stage this is. . . . I will judge it by the way the reforms are carried out. If the reforms are a success, then everything is all right. . . .

As for the second question, about the Soviet Union . . . I always came out for independence of republics and states, and that got me into trouble not just once. I was attacked at (Communist Party) plenums, in the press and in the Parliament. But my vision of this process was rather different. Whatever form--union, commonwealth or confederation, I was never particular about the terms--I stood for confederation from the beginning. . . .

But what is happening now worries me. There is no mechanism cementing this commonwealth. If the economic union or economic community worked on the basis of market economy, it would hold.

Now (we are in) a stage of market economy that is, in fact, not market economy. Independent states freed themselves from the big center only to establish their own economic centers. . . .

Secondly, what worries me about the dissolution is that, Phoenix-like from ashes, old nationalist-communist, Bolshevik regimes start to come to life. There is even (the danger of) dictatorships. It worries me a lot. The West should be watching it very closely.

Q: Where are these Bolshevik, ultranationalist, communist regimes emerging?

A: In Georgia, for example. It is a downright dictatorship--and with racist sentiments, too. There are similar problems in some of the Central Asian republics and elsewhere in the Caucasus. And I am worried very much with the developments in Ukraine. Even in the Baltics, for which I had such serious hopes, legislative acts are adopted that result in the appearance of second-class citizens. For example, yesterday I wrote a personal letter to Latvian Supreme Soviet Chairman Anatoly Gorbunovs to protest against the law on citizenship that provides for virtually dividing citizens into two parts--genuine citizens and non-genuine, second-class citizens. . . .

Q: How do you assess the situation inside Russia? What are the tasks that face Boris Yeltsin and his government?

A: This is the most difficult question.

Firstly, the Russian government is now getting into a very complicated position. If the criticism was divided into two streams before--that directed at the central government and the country’s president, Mikhail Gorbachev, and that aimed at Yeltsin, now it is going to take one direction. All the responsibility, all the criticism, will fall on (Yeltsin’s) shoulders.

On the whole, I support his economic reforms or, to be more precise, his direction of economic reforms. But I believe not everything is thought out, especially the intention to introduce the so-called free prices. It seems to me that “free prices” cannot be freed without a demonopolized economy. Secondly, prices can be freed only if retail and wholesale trade have been privatized. Thirdly, I believe that when prices are lifted, the market should be flooded not only with manufactured goods . . . but also the means of production--land and housing--so that money can spread through all the markets, from foodstuffs and consumer goods to land and the means of production--everything.

Q: Do you believe that President Yeltsin has a thought-out program, a plan?

A: I simply don’t know. But since these measures that I was talking about are lacking, I don’t know if such a plan does exist. I spoke to (Yeltsin) two or three days ago. I told him everything I am telling you. He said, “Yes, yes. We must do it.” That is, he agrees, but I don’t see (the reaction) in the Supreme Soviet (legislature) so far. On the contrary, the Russian Federation’s Supreme Soviet turned down the government’s suggestions on private ownership of land. . . .

The first time I spoke to him right after he announced the liberalization of prices, I told him, “You should not do it so fast, in November.” He said: “It is all right. I won’t do it earlier than January.”

This time, I spoke to him about the market, about a market for capital, a market for the means of production, a market for land, for housing and so forth.

Q: If you could go back to where you began perestroika almost seven years ago, what would you do differently?

A: A lot could have been done better, more seriously, specifically on economic problems. We should have started with the conversion (of the military-industrial complex) faster. We should have begun earlier to elaborate plans on the development of the market economy. That is clearly obvious.

More than once, by the way, I said that perestroika should have first been launched in agriculture. My suggestion was simple. It was at the end of 1985, or the beginning of 1986. I urged that all the barren and difficult-to-cultivate land--where there was neither a state nor collective farm or where all the residents had left with no intention of ever coming back--should be given away to farmers.

I am convinced that, by now, our non-black-earth zone would have been full of people who took up those lands and that we would now have already had five years of experience of individual farming.

Gorbachev understood (and agreed with) this in general. But he said that the idea (at the moment) would be taken as blasphemy, as an encroachment on the ideological holy of holies.

You see, the main thing in perestroika was that it could have proceeded faster and more successfully, but it had ideological blinders--especially in the economy. All the time, every measure was sized up ideologically, by whether or not it corresponded to ideological canons or dogmas.

Now I can speak more freely since, along with Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev), I am terminating my political activities. All my attempts--all speeches against dogmatism, ideological blindness, narrowness of Marxist views and evaluations--were welcomed by part of the intelligentsia, but met with malice and irritation by the party apparatus.

It was all accompanied by harassment. If it happened only to me it would have been one thing, I would have survived. What was important was that ideology was dominating our decisions. . . .

Q. What can you see in terms of the tasks ahead of Russia and the other republics? You have been pessimistic recently. Why?

A: I think some republics are lacking in potential for democratic development--in their traditions or in their cadres, who are the old Communist Party cadres. Democratic forces are being persecuted. That is why I am so worried. Processes can go not in the democratic direction at all. . . .

The existing situation is strange and paradoxical. A majority of popular masses--not everybody but a majority--want conservative decisions, but made in a democratic way. . . .

Q: How then does one proceed? Some political institutions, in fact, are bent on radical decisions, but do not take them in democratic ways. Can you build democracy through undemocratic means?

A: Yes, we have those who would try to do this. I am speaking about masses, about the people. They want order, discipline. They want to punish someone, to find someone to blame. At the same time, they don’t want to return to the totalitarian past.

There is also a clash of individual consciousness with the public consciousness. The individual consciousness says, “Democracy is personally good for me, but all the others should be brought to order.” And that is the way everybody thinks. “I am free but it doesn’t mean that another man is free.” It should be the reverse--”I can be free only when another man is free.”

Q: And what you are going to do now?

A: We are organizing a foundation of socioeconomic and politologic research, the Gorbachev Foundation. I think Gorbachev will be its president, and I will be vice president. It is my long-time dream. In fact, I have been thinking of such a foundation for some two years already. Even when I worked at the Communist Party’s Central Committee, I wanted to quit and organize such a foundation. But the Central Committee leaders opposed the idea for fear that I would lead my research along revisionist lines. They were right. So nothing came of it then.

. . . I would like to gather young people there who can think in unorthodox ways, give them a chance to express, absolutely unhindered, their point of view. I think all kinds of seminars may be organized there on different problems of today.