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March 22, 2010
Yossi Klein Halevi: Was Obama's confrontation with Israel premeditated?
JWisdom.comWhy Hollywood and Timelessness don't flash-back, flash-forward or mesh with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (7 minutes)
Kevin Baxter: Boxer has a will to win, and to worship
March 19, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: The Divine is in the details
JWisdom.com Stewards of sacrifice with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Why Obama is waging war on Israel
March 18, 2010
Cal Thomas: Israel's New Enemy: America?
JWisdom.com Love me not? with Rabbi David Aaron (5 minutes)
Jonathan Rosenblum: Washington Throws a Tantrum
March 17, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Orwell, Santayana, and Me
Jonathan Tobin: How Many Lives Is Biden's Pride Worth?
March 16, 2010
Steven Emerson: Combating Lawfare
JWisdom.com How to perform a miracle with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair (4 minutes)
Anne Bayefsky: Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel
March 15, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Father's obligations toward minor children
JWisdom.com Moody, Grumpy, Irritable Children with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Judith Graham: Get the whole picture before a CT
March 12, 2010
Rabbi David Aaron: You CAN have Heaven on Earth
JWisdom.com Manufacturing mediums with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: The march of the Red-Green brigades
March 11, 2010
Glenn Garvin: Conspiracy theories, why people believe them and how they spread
JWisdom.com For Yourself, Not By Yourself with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer : Turn leftovers into tasty New England hash
Paul Richter: Biden promises 'viable Palestine' is in the offing
March 10, 2010
Paul Greenberg: Death Checks In
JWisdom.com How To Get A (Real) Life with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( EXTENDED EPISODE)
Paul Richter: Israel exerts soverign right to its capital as Biden looks on astounded
Richard A. Serrano: 'Jihad Jane' indictment alleges threat from within U.S.
March 9, 2010
Wesley Pruden: Joe's Israeli adventure
JWisdom.com Free To Be (Responsibly) You and Me! with Rabbi Naftali Brawer ( 8 MINUTES)
David G. Savage: Supreme Court to rule on free speech in case of soldier's funeral
March 8, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Make a fuss about those who cuss?
JWisdom.com Finding or Losing Yourself? Here's How! with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Steven Emerson: America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion
March 5, 2010
Rabbi Berel Wein: Golden Calf still with us --- except it has multiplied
JWisdom.com The Limits of Eternity with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: Biden's lost cause
March 4, 2010
Alan M. Dershowitz: How About A Real Campaign Against Abuses?
JWisdom.com Using Things, Loving People with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff ( 7 MINUTES)
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's Everything's Relative
March 3, 2010
JWisdom.com Grasping The Name of Your Life Game with Rabbi Warren Goldstein ( 8 MINUTES)
The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta : A cowboy's recipes for really good grub
March 2, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Someone's there
Diane Toroian Keaggy : Have we misunderstood Michelangelo?
March 1, 2010
JWisdom.com Whole in One with Rabbi David Aaron ( 5 MINUTES)
Michael Muskal: Hillary meets with Israeli official, discusses gefilte fish dispute
Feb. 26, 2010
Rabbi Francis Nataf: The Megilla of Spring
JWisdom.com A Biblical Secret for a More Powerful You with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 MINUTES)
Caroline B. Glick: When rhetoric rules the roost
Feb. 25, 2010
The Jewish Ethicist By Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: When walking away from your mortgage is both economically sound and makes ethical sense
JWisdom.com The Second Most Important Question in Your Life with Rabbi Yehoshua Karsh ( 5 MINUTES)
Seema Mehta : U.S.-Israel relations raised in California's Senate race --- by conservatives
Feb. 24, 2010
Rabbi Avi Shafran: The gift of the ‘prayer bomber’
Steven Emerson: Why Religious Freedom Commission is under attack
Feb. 23, 2010
Dennis Prager: Government, Yes! The Divine and Parents, No!
JWisdom.com The Last Laugh of Enlightenment with Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair ( 5 MINUTES)
Anne Applebaum: Prepare for war with Iran --- in case Israel strikes
Feb. 22, 2010
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Is it not refreshing Tiger Woods' career has crashed and burned so dramatically?
JWisdom.com Esther and the third Truth with Rabbi David Aaron ( 9 MINUTES)
Kelly Brewington: Going smoke-free may raise diabetes risk

Jewish World Review Dec. 21, 2005 / 20 Kislev 5766

A man of parts

By Mort Zuckerman

Mort Zuckerman
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | We diminish ourselves when we fail to honor the passing of a great and good human being. It is now a few weeks since the death of Alexander Yakovlev. I was surprised that it went virtually unnoticed in the West, for here was a man who played a singular role in the history of our times.


He lived most of his life as a faithful member of the Communist Party, rising in the ranks to become the chief of ideology under Leonid Brezhnev. Yet this same Soviet apparatchik, as he called himself, underwent an unparalleled transformation to play a central role in the end of the Cold War and the elimination of Communist rule in the Soviet Union. He became the champion of the greatest reform initiatives of the entire Soviet era, in which he came to be known as "the father of Russian democracy" and the "godfather of glasnost," the policy of openness that gradually lifted curbs on the press and on individual speech. He was also the principal advocate of other political and economic reforms known as perestroika.


What moved him? He came to believe that there were universal human values that should take precedence over class struggles; that the Communist Party should abandon its monopoly power and accept the challenges of pluralism; and that Bolshevism should be denounced, as he put it, for its "fixation on keeping power at any cost by force and unconstitutional means, if necessary." When Communist rule was finally abandoned, Yakovlev said, "It was an end of an unbelievable crime."


Passion. Yakovlev understood that it was the lack of a democratic regime in Russia that was the source of all of its difficulties. "If you are free," he said, "the rest falls into place." His stated objectives were "free individual and free society; democratic political system; the rule of law, not the rule of individuals; modern economy;. . . liberation of society from that supremacy . . . of state over both society and individuals; and maximum possible opportunities for self realization of property."


Let us remember this is not John Locke or Thomas Jefferson, imbued from childhood with the values of the Enlightenment, but a man who imbibed from birth the doctrines of Marxism-Leninism  —   and thrived in that society. Remarkably, Yakovlev understood that the collapse of communism was not the same as the emergence of freedom. He knew how much Russia in its 1,000-year history had nurtured a culture of dependency  —   "on the leader, on the state. On the boss, on somebody." So he insisted that without the reforms "what we will wind up with is a mixture of criminality, dictatorship, corruption."


He had the wisdom to see that Russia could never embrace its future without understanding its past and the courage to make it confront those decades of shame. Yakovlev headed a commission to identify the victims of Stalinist repression and was instrumental in the posthumous rehabilitation of more than 5 million wrongfully accused citizens who were victims of Joseph Stalin's execution squads and concentration camps. Then he initiated the exposure of the secret 1939 pact with Nazi Germany that paved the way to Soviet annexation of the Baltic nations. Even when he retired, he began the process of publishing some 30 or 40 volumes to document the narrative history of Russia's secret police in the 20th century and their critical role in Communist rule and cruelty, so that the crimes could never be expunged from memory.


Yakovlev, finally, was a major force in many of Mikhail Gorbachev's foreign policies, including the policy of nonintervention in Eastern Europe. He stuck to his belief in democracy even when in the 1990s it became unfashionable once again. In the coup against Gorbachev, Yakovlev poured scorn on the putschists at a time when their chance of victory was still real, as the Times of London said. In the coup against Boris Yeltsin, he made his way through the barricades and joined Yeltsin's defenders in the White House. Yet when the coup against Gorbachev failed, he didn't hesitate to break with him for abandoning the most crucial component of the reform program and bringing into his inner circle the hard-liners and plotters, including the KGB's Vladimir Kriuchkov. Later, when Russian political culture again grew less democratic under Vladimir Putin, Yakovlev criticized the creeping authoritarianism of the Russian president.


No one today in Russia fills Yakovlev's shoes. No one has his stature, his intellect, his passion for democracy, and his willingness to examine the darker side of Russia's modern history.


An inspiring commitment to human values shone through this man, whom I met on virtually every one of my 20-odd visits to the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 1990s. It was an honor to work with him on the Internet publication of the archives of the secret police so that they could never again be suppressed. His leadership, and his life, will serve forever as a marker for those who believe that Russia can be a greater country and provide a better life for its citizens as a democratic state.

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JWR contributor Mort Zuckerman is editor-in-chief and publisher of U.S. News and World Report. Send your comments to him by clicking here.

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© 2005, Mortimer Zuckerman

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