Synopsis
With all the fervor of a recent convert, Yakovlev repudiates the political ideology and party in which he was a stalwart for many years. Marxism, he says, demolished civil society and ruthlessly replaced it with immorality and state-supported atheism, exploited the traditional authoritarian consciousness of Russians, and so on. He also describes the pre-collapse reforms, in which he was a major player. No bibliography. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.
Reviews
A former Communist Party senior official turned heretic offers an impassioned and devastating indictment of Soviet communism. Yakovlev, at one time a chief hard-line propagandist, became an architect of perestroika 's liberal reforms under Mikhail Gorbachev. Expelled from the Party in 1991, he is currently vice-president of the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow and continues to oppose efforts to restore the old order. Viewing Bolshevism as a natural outgrowth of Marxist theory instead of an aberration, he graphically demonstrates its disastrous economic, spiritual, moral and political effects. He also assesses the incomplete gains of perestroika , calling for a gradual political and economic renewal requiring competence, openness and hard work at all levels. On a more specific level, Yakovlev also advocates the prohibition of monopolies, a substantial reduction in military spending and "eco-development" attuned to environmental impact. An appendix includes five speeches which he gave in the West in 1991-92.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A bitterly comprehensive indictment of Marx and Marxism handed down by a sometime stalwart of the USSR establishment who, however, offers almost no insights on his own conversion from apostle to apostate. A consummate insider whose career as a CP apparatchik eventually earned him membership in the Politburo, Yakovlev provides an impassioned audit of the many ways in which Marxism proved ruinous for Soviet Russia. Among other things, he charges that the Marxist version of socialism produced a despotic state in which doctrinaire ideology and skewed priorities led to any number of socioeconomic disasters--from the brutally repressive Bolshevik era right on through the infighting that erupted following reforms instituted under Gorbachev. Similarly, Yakovlev (who turns 70 this year) casts a cold eye on the havoc wreaked by a closed system that precluded any possibility of dissent, let alone objective analyses of its faults. Braving such an analysis of his own work, the author confides that his own son pronounced this book futile on the grounds that its conclusions have long since been self-evident. Many Western readers--especially those familiar with Arthur Koestler (The God That Failed, Darkness at Noon, etc.) and other liberal critics of Kremlin dogma--will concur. As Yakovlev points out, however, it's important for those who played leading roles in one of the 20th century's great tragedies to bear witness, in part to dash any hope that Marxism might be redeemed from the Stalinists. He warns, moreover, that people unaccustomed to thinking or acting for themselves could be tempted to trade a measure of their hard-won democratic institutions for the promise of material gain. A damning, eloquently made case against Marxism--but one that lacks genuine resonance for want of an accounting of its author's change of mind. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
This volume is not for casual perusal. The subject is large, highly complex, and, for those who once believed, bitter. Yakovlev offers a discursive series of reflections on the evolution and corruption of Marxism in his country, a faith in whose name millions were sacrificed. What in this creed led to the end result? How was it prostituted, and what did it cost Russia? Yakovlev, himself one of "the high priesthood of Marxism" and, not coincidentally, once Mikhail Gorbachev's right-hand man, is in an ideal position to analyze these matters, even if his answers may strike readers as overtaken by history. He writes without illusions and with some hope. For academic collections.
- R.H. Johnston, McMaster Univ., Hamilton, Ontario
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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