Крестосев

by Alexander N. Yakovlev, Александр Николаевич Яковлев

В основе книги Александра Яковлева новые шокирующие факты о большевистской технологии истребления миллионов людей в годы строительства социализма в СССР.

Genres: History, Russia, Politics, Nonfiction, Russian History, Soviet Union

270 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Я́ковлев; 1923–2005) was a Soviet and Russian politician, diplomat, and historian. A member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s, he was termed the "godfather of glasnost", and was the intellectual force behind Mikhail Gorbachev's reform programme of glasnost and perestroika.

Ses also: Александр Николаевич Яковлев

Reviews

[Elyse · Rating 1 out of 5]

How can a century of violence come across like some horrible bureaucratic list of names and dates? I don't know, but Yakovlev did it.

I'd read "The Gulag Archipelago" by Solzhenitsyn and cried through the whole thing. I was looking for a book that, without the drama and human story, would detail the decisions made and factors considered by Soviet leaders as they embarked on their murderous course. I thought this sounded like just the thing.

Instead, I could barely read a sentence without falling asleep. Names! Of people, organizations, departments. Histories of the people, organizations, departments. I would strain to try to keep them all ordered in my poor brain, thinking maybe they would be important later. Alas, no.

I still haven't found the type of book I'm looking for, one that presents important information in an interesting way. I know! I am so shallow. And maybe just not as smart as all the other reviewers. Oh well.

Yakovlev seems like an incredible person. But the book, not so much.

[Derek · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent overview of Soviet evils penned by one of communism’s grave-diggers. Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine a Russian writer associated with the state making such a clear moral condemnation of the whole Soviet experiment.

[Allen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not an easy read but at least shorter than Solzhenitsyn's Gulag. The book was written for the Russian people and is partly at least a documentation of key people who were involved either as victims or perpetrators of Soviet Violence.
Yakovlev was there. He was a senior functionary in the party when he became totally disillusioned for reasons he describes. He was in the 70s ambassador to Canada, served in Gorbachev's government and was Chair of Russia's Presidential commission for the Rehabilitation of victims of Political Repression. He had knowledge of and access to documentation that others would not. He researched the book during the 90s which was the ONLY decade that russian historians were free to dig into and publish such material.
As Putin slowly drags Russia back into Stalinist ways, including a rehabilitation of Stalin himself, such materials are off limits and those who pursue such research are persecuted as in former times.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent. Very revealing and well researched. It bings out some very horrifying truths about the entire Soviet period.

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

At a time when many Americans are too young to remember the Soviet Union and serious candidates for President are running on a socialist platform, books like this are important. This high-level former Soviet official documents the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Bolsheviks starting with the October Revolution. He details the shocking persecution, imprisonment, starvation and execution of the landed citizens, the workers, the clergy, the intelligentsia, the Jews, the ethnic groups in Russia and the military that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people in the name of socialism. It is a stark warning about the consequences of socialism, and for that reason, it is an important book.

Unfortunately, the book is unreadable. It is not a narrative or a history. Rather, it is a 300-page list of all the different evil things that the Bolsheviks did, with a different chapter devoted to each group of people who were persecuted. Each chapter is just a recitation of all the different evil acts (“...and then they shot Petroff, and then they arrested Anastasia, and then they sent Vlaskov to Siberia,” etc.). It is just an endless list of names of people and places, numbers and the acronyms of innumerable government agencies, almost all of which will be unfamiliar to anyone who is not a scholar of the history of the Soviet Union.

So while the book is a valuable source of information, it’s not a book that can actually be read, and there’s little insight that can be gleaned except that socialism is really, really terrifying.

[Romuald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Обязательная книга для каждого русского. Сам факт её существования практически невероятен, если подумать о том, как противилась русская власть почти во все годы своего современного существования всяким выявлениям преступной деятельности русских вождей, КГБистов и им содействующим. Миллионы людей были репрессированы (убиты или высланы в дальнии районы Сибири и т.д.), судьбы многих других сломаны. Несколько последних поколений выросло в атмосфере удушения культуры, науки, экономики и др., лицемерия по отношении к другим, открытого или тайного кровополития, и т.д. и т.п. Ленин не был лучше Сталина - наоборот, он скорее был учителем, показавшим пример того, как удержать власть несчитаясь с народом и его нуждами. Интересно, что то, что происходит сейчас в России (2023 год), имеет параллели к бывшим советским методам репрессий - иногда кажется, что Путин сейчас практически копирует то, что эффективно удерживало власть в 1917-1970-ых годах.
Книга, конечно, нелёгкая для чтения, и практически не книга, а документация (список) преступлений, произшедших в период большевистской/советской власти - поэтому не стоило бы читать её как обычную книгу, а как важный документ, который даёт нам шанс взглянуть на историю глазами, которые не утверждены как и путинским, так и ленино-сталинскими режимами советских годов.

[Denny Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little on the dry side - but packed with straightforward, no-nonsense information. Yakovlev seems indispensable in the transformation, but he does not brag about this fact. He was on a mission and his mission was accomplished. This makes him rare. And rarer still coming from the environment that he was able to supersede. Through his acts he turned the tide of history and then had time to write a book about it. Amazing!

[Michael sean pettersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent work

This is a really good compelling book. I couldn't put it down. I've read Stalin in power and this book drives home. How bad Stalin's regime was.

[russell moor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Avoid like the plague

Run from this book. Drier than the Sahara. I read for entertainment and you will find none here. No read twice!