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Alexander Yakovlev
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== Early political career and exile == In July 1965, he was appointed the first deputy head of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU by [[Leonid Brezhnev]]. In August 1968, Yakovlev was sent to Prague as the representative of Central Committee, and witnessed [[Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia|the entry of tanks into the city]]. He later spoke out against removing [[Alexander Dubček]]. That same year, he was placed in command of a group charged with drafting a [[1977 Constitution of the Soviet Union|new constitution]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Конституция (Основной Закон) Союза Советских Социалистических Республик 1977 г. |trans-title=Constitution (Basic Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialists Republics, 1977 |url=http://museumreforms.ru/node/13918 |access-date=21 July 2022 |website=P. A. Stolypin Museum of the Russian History of Reforms |language=ru}}</ref> Yakovlev served as editor of several party publications and rose to the key position of head of the CPSU's Department of Ideology and Propaganda from 1969 to 1973. In January 1970, he visited the United States again, meeting then-Governor of California [[Ronald Reagan]], diplomat [[Henry Kissinger]], and actress [[Jane Fonda]], who warned him that Moscow "did not appreciate the full danger of American militarism". This trip, again, failed to change his unfavourable impression of the United States. === Exile to Canada === In 1972, he took a bold stand by publishing the article entitled "Against Antihistoricism"<ref>Александр Яковлев [http://left.ru/2005/15/yakovlev132.phtml?print Против антиисторизма] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151205235105/http://left.ru/2005/15/yakovlev132.phtml?print |date=2015-12-05 }} - Литературная газета», 15 ноября 1972 г</ref> in ''[[Literaturnaya Gazeta]],'' critical of Russian nationalism, and nationalism in the Soviet Union in general. As a result, he was removed from his position. Given the choice of a diplomatic post as a form of exile, he chose to be the [[List of ambassadors of Russia to Canada|ambassador to Canada]], remaining at that post for a decade.<ref name="Keller 1989, pp.30-33" /> He arrived in Canada in July 1973. During this time, he and [[Prime Minister of Canada|Canadian Prime Minister]] [[Pierre Trudeau]] became close friends. Trudeau's second son, [[Alexandre Trudeau]], was named after Yakovlev.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Taber |first=Jane |date=4 January 2007 |title=Le nouveau Trudeau: Little PET weighs in at 7 pounds 4 ounces |work=[[The Globe and Mail]] |url=https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/le-nouveau-trudeau-little-pet-weighs-in-at-7-pounds-4-ounces/article1077684/ |access-date=21 July 2022}}</ref> From 16 to 23 May 1983, Yakovlev accompanied [[Mikhail Gorbachev]], who at the time was the Soviet official in charge of agriculture, on his tour of Canada. The purpose of the visit was to tour Canadian farms and agricultural institutions, in the hopes of taking lessons that could be applied in the Soviet Union. However, the two also renewed their earlier friendship and, tentatively at first, began to discuss the prospect of liberalisation in the Soviet Union. In an interview years later, Yakovlev recalled: <blockquote>At first we kind of sniffed around each other and our conversations didn't touch on serious issues. And then, verily, history plays tricks on one, we had a lot of time together as guests of then Liberal Minister of Agriculture [[Eugene Whelan]] in Canada who, himself, was too late for the reception because he was stuck with some striking farmers somewhere. So we took a long walk on that Minister's farm and, as it often happens, both of us suddenly were just kind of flooded and let go. I somehow, for some reason, threw caution to the wind and started telling him about what I considered to be utter stupidities in the area of foreign affairs, especially about those [[SS-20]] missiles that were being stationed in Europe and a lot of other things. And he did the same thing. We were completely frank. He frankly talked about the problems in the internal situation in Russia. He was saying that under these conditions, the conditions of dictatorship and absence of freedom, the country would simply perish. So it was at that time, during our three-hour conversation, almost as if our heads were knocked together, that we poured it all out and during that three-hour conversation we actually came to agreement on all our main points.<ref>{{Cite web|title = Shaping Russia's Transformation: A Leader of Perestroika Looks Back - Interview with Aleksandr Yakovlev|url = http://conversations.berkeley.edu/content/alexander-yakovlev|publisher = Institute of International Studies at the University of California, Berkeley|date = November 21, 1996|access-date = February 21, 2013}}</ref></blockquote> === Return to the Soviet Union === Two weeks after the visit, as a result of Gorbachev's interventions, Yakovlev was recalled from Canada by [[Yuri Andropov]] and became Director of the [[Institute of World Economy and International Relations]] of the [[Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union]] in Moscow on 16 August 1983; he was succeeded by his friend [[Yevgeny Primakov]] (himself later Prime Minister of Russia) in 1985.
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