I met Yakovlev
in Moscow in the early 1990s. I came to his presence accompanied
by Yuri Kariakin, an essayist who was an expert on Goya and Dostoyevsky.
Both Yakovlev and Kariakin were advisors to Gorbachev and knew
better than anyone the secret history of the implosion of the
Soviet empire, perhaps the most important event of the 20th century.
The long
conversation was held in patriotically mispronounced but structurally
correct English. Yakovlev smoked a pipe and emptied it by tapping
it against his hefty wooden leg, generating with that sound a
strange sensation of authority. His amazing story has three acts
and a denouement, all perfectly defined.
Act
One. In 1972, Yakovlev, who presided over no less than
the agitation and propaganda section of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party, published a harsh article about the Soviet
Union's ultranationalist and authoritarian tradition, defending
the theory that the problems of Marxism derived from the impossibility
of examining reality and correcting errors amid the brutal climate
of intolerance at the time.
That was
his first move toward glasnost. That critical vision
of his country probably took root a few years earlier, when the
party sent him to Columbia University to learn how the enemy functioned.
Act
Two. Leonid Brezhnev, then Soviet prime minister, decides
to remove from the Kremlin such a troublesome comrade and in 1973
transfers him to Canada as ambassador so that he won't contaminate
other members of the nomenklatura with his dangerous
theories.
In Canada,
Yakovlev discovers a country that is huge and cold, like his,
but efficient and prosperous, blessed with a compassionate capitalism.
His convictions are reaffirmed. If the Soviet regime -- which
has neither the contradictions of the market nor the greed of
businessmen -- were to introduce freedom of opinion and allow
criticism, the great motherland of socialism would be at the head
of the planet in a few years.
Act
Three. A decade goes by, and Yakovlev is still in his
golden exile, ruminating theories. But in 1983 something apparently
innocent happens: Making a stopover in Canada is a 50-some-year-old
comrade who is an expert in agrarian affairs, a rising star in
the Politburo and a protégé of Yuri Andropov, the
sophisticated former head of the KGB who, a few months earlier,
after Brezhnev's death, had risen to the post of Secretary General
of the Communist Party.
The visitor
is Mikhail Gorbachev, a practical man without much ideological
density. He expects to spend only a few hours in Canada. But the
Aeroflot plane has mechanical problems, and Gorbachev is forced
to delay his departure a couple of days. During that time, Yakovlev's
powerful mind expounds all his convincing arguments: It is possible
to transform the Soviet Union into a great country. You can achieve
that with freedom.
The outcome
is a chain of unforeseen events. Andropov dies in 1984; a few
months later, so does his successor, Konstantin Chernenko. The
nomenklatura wants a young leader, and in 1985 Gorbachev
is elected party chief. One of his first appointees is Yakovlev.
Gorbachev wants him in the Kremlin, in the office next to his.
The two of them will demonstrate to the world the superiority
of communism. They're going to reform the system from top to bottom
(that's perestroika), and they'll do it in a climate
of freedom (that's glasnost).
What happened?
A few years later, the empire collapsed. Why? The two men were
dreamers: Communism can exist only through repression. Marxism
is an intellectual mistake that leads not to paradise but to the
gulag. It's inevitable.
My conversation
with Yakovlev ended with a question from me and a succinct reply
from him. ''Why doesn't Marxism work?'' I asked. He fixed his
eyes on me, tapped his wooden leg with his pipe and said, with
a certain melancholy: ``It does not adapt to human nature.''
