The Fate of Marxism in Russia

Alexander Yakovlev was in charge of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the early 1970s.

From 1973 to 1983, he was Soviet Ambassador to Canada.

In 1985 he returned to work for the Central Committee and was elected its Secretary and member of the Politburo.

Later he was appointed to the Presidential Council. Working in the highest echelon of government, side by side with Mikhail Gorbachev, Yakovlev was a major architect of perestroika and a leading sponsor of glasnost.

In August 1991 he was expelled from the CPSU for what were called "activities detrimental to the interests of the Communist Party" and for attempting to set up another party.

In this powerful book, Yakovlev acknowledges the decay of his country and reveals his painful intellectual and political odyssey as he progressed from stalwart Party ideologist to disillusionioned critic of Marxism and Communism. Yakovlev vividly describes the ways that Marxism has proven to be not only wrong but ruinous to Russia, and he discusses the pervasive, historical roots of the Russian "authoritarian consciousness" that helps explain why Russian society was so susceptible to the totalitarian implications of Marxism.

He describes the triumvirate structure of power in the USSR before and during perestroika, the political reforms that were initiated, the ways that Soviet attitudes towards glasnost and perestroika evolved in both the reformist and conservative wings of the Party, and the reasons for the seemingly final swift collapse of the old ruling structures - the crushing defeat of the party - in August 1991.