Editing Alexander Yakovlev (section)

==Perestroika==
[[Image:Bush and Gorbachev at the Malta summit in 1989.gif|thumb|right|[[Mikhail Gorbachev]] and Yakovlev opposite United States President [[George H. W. Bush]] on board the [[SS Maxim Gorkiy|SS ''Maxim Gorkiy'']] at the 1989 [[Malta Summit]].]]
When Gorbachev became [[General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union]] in 1985, Yakovlev became a senior advisor, helping to shape [[Foreign relations of the Soviet Union|Soviet foreign policy]] by advocating Soviet non-intervention in Eastern Europe, and accompanying Gorbachev on his five summit meetings with President of the United States [[Ronald Reagan]]. In the summer of 1985, Yakovlev became head of the propaganda department of the CPSU Central Committee. Domestically, he argued in favour of the reform programmes that became known as [[glasnost]] (openness) and [[perestroika]] (restructuring) and played a key role in executing those policies.

{{quote|After the [[20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union|XX Congress]], in an ultra-narrow circle of our closest friends and associates, we often discussed the problems of democratization of the country and society. We chose a simple - like a sledgehammer - method of propagating the "ideas" of late [[Lenin]]. A group of true, not imaginary reformers developed (of course, orally) the following plan: to strike with the authority of Lenin at [[Stalin]], at [[Stalinism]]. And then, if successful, - to strike with [[Georgi Plekhanov|Plekhanov]] and [[Social Democracy]] - at Lenin, and then – with liberalism and "moral socialism" - at revolutionarism in general...
The Soviet totalitarian regime could be destroyed only through glasnost and totalitarian party discipline, while hiding behind the interests of improving socialism. [...] Looking back, I can proudly say that a clever, but very simple tactic - the mechanisms of totalitarianism against the system of totalitarianism – has worked.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://agitclub.ru/gorby/ussr/blackbook1.htm|title=ЧЕРНАЯ КНИГА КОММУНИЗМА|website=agitclub.ru|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201104135633/http://agitclub.ru/gorby/ussr/blackbook1.htm|archive-date=2020-11-04}}</ref>|source=Yakovlev, in the introduction to "[[Black Book of Communism]]"}}

In 1987, the Russian neo-Nazi organization [[Pamyat]] sent a letter entitled "Stop Yakovlev!" to the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, labelling Yakovlev as a Jew and the main instigator of a course of action that would lead to the 'capitulation before the [[imperialist]]s'.<ref>[http://old.nasledie.ru/oborg/2_18/0009/01.htm «Остановите Яковлева!» Листовка—обращение Координационного Совета Патриотического Движения «Память» к Пленуму Центрального Комитета Коммунистической Партии Советского Союза]</ref>

For decades, it was the official policy of the Soviet Union to deny the existence of the secret protocol to the [[Nazi–Soviet Pact]]. At the behest of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yakovlev headed a commission investigating the existence of such a protocol. In December 1989 Yakovlev concluded that the protocol had existed and revealed his findings to the Soviet Parliament. As a result, the first multi-party elected [[Congress of Soviets]] since 1918 "passed the declaration admitting the existence of the secret protocols, condemning and denouncing them".<ref>Jerzy W. Borejsza, Klaus Ziemer, Magdalena Hułas. ''Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes in Europe'', p. 521. Berghahn Books, 2006.</ref>