Encyclopedia of Russian History
Page 386
For the next two years, Yagoda faithfully served Stalin and played a major part in organizing the Great Terror. He worked closely with Andrei Vyshinsky in organizing the first show trials and in the slaughters of the Red Army high command. More than a quarter of a million people were arrested during 1934 and 1935. The Gulag was vastly expanded under Yagoda’s stewardship, and the use of slave labor became a major part of the Soviet economy. Stalin, however, was not satisfied with Yagoda’s performance and organized a campaign to remove him, using, among others, Lazar Kagano-vich, who began to complain about the organs’ lax-ness toward “Trotskyists.” Stalin’s telegram of August 25, 1936, from Sochi to members of the Politburo, sealed Yagoda’s fate. Yagoda was then appointed as the Commissar of Communications (1936-1937). Arrested on March 28, 1937,Yagoda was tried as a member of the “Right-Trotskyist Bloc” in the last of the show trials. Yagoda and other
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
YAKOVLEV, ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH
defendants had to face Vyshinsky and the hanging judge, Vasily Ulrikh, with whom Yagoda had worked closely in the past. The former chief of the secret police remained stoical despite the obvious measures used to extract the necessary confessions. Sentenced to death, he was executed on March 15, 1938, a fate shared by several members of his family, but his son miraculously survived. Yagoda has not been rehabilitated. See also: PURGES, THE GREAT; SHOW TRIALS; STATE SECURITY, ORGANS OF
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Andrew, Christopher, and Gordievsky, Oleg. (1990). KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. New York: HarperCollins.
MICHAEL PARRISH
YAKOVLEV, ALEXANDER NIKOLAYEVICH
(b. 1922), secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (March 1986 to mid-1990) and member of the Politburo (mid-1987 to mid-1990).
Alexander Yakovlev was General Secretary Gorbachev’s closest advisor and most loyal supporter in the Soviet leadership during the first five years of perestroika. During the 1960s and early 1970s Yakovlev held a series of responsible positions in the propaganda department of the Central Committee. In 1972, while serving as the acting director of the department, he published a scathing attack on the growing Russophile tendency within the Communist Party; this alienated a segment of the party leadership and led to his exile as ambassador to Canada, where he remained until 1983. When Gorbachev visited Canada that year as the head of a delegation from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he was reportedly so impressed with Yakovlev that he named him the director of the USSR Academy of Sciences’s major research institute on international affairs.
With Gorbachev’s selection as General Secretary in 1985, Yakovlev emerged as Gorbachev’s most influential advisor on both foreign and domestic policies. Yakovlev was often characterized as the architect of perestroika, but it is impossible to determine the accuracy of this assertion. He was
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Alexander Yakovlev drew upon his time in the United States and Canada to help formulate Gorbachev’s reforms. © PETER
TURNLEY/CORBIS
named the director of the propaganda department of the Central Committee in 1985 and was a member of the small Soviet delegation to the first summit conference with President Reagan in November of that same year. He attended all subsequent summit meetings.
In early 1986 Yakovlev was named a Secretary of the Central Committee and soon became locked in a battle with Secretary Yegor Ligachev for control of the party’s ideological and cultural policies. Over the next two years he emerged as an articulate supporter of Gorbachev’s new thinking in international relations, championed democratization and glasnost at home, defined the objectives of cultural life in humanist rather than socialist terms, and challenged orthodox definitions of Marxism-Leninism. He often proved more radical than Gorbachev in his definition of democratization, his enthusiasm for the establishment of cooperatives, and for private economic activity.
1697
YALTA CONFERENCE
Yakovlev’s orientation seemed to change after the reform of the Secretariat and apparat in the fall of 1988, which led to his appointment as the director of the Central Committee’s new commission on international policy. Over the next two years he emerged as a social democrat and political liberal who insisted that the extension of individual freedom was the true objective of reform. After his selection as a deputy to the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1989, he championed the extension of electoral politics, expressed doubts about the capacity of the Communist Party to lead reform, and endorsed a multiparty political system.
With Gorbachev’s selection as President of the USSR in March 1990, Yakovlev was named to Gorbachev’s advisory council and retired from his positions as Secretary of the Central Committee and member of the Politburo in mid-1990. Increasingly disillusioned with the Communist Party, in mid-1991 he helped to form an alternative, rival political movement, publicly repudiated Marxism, and resigned as Gorbachev’s advisor. In August 1991 he quit the Communist Party and warned of an impending coup against the President. See also: CENTRAL COMMITTEE; GORBACHEV, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH; LIGACHEV, YEGOR KUZMICH; PERE-STROIKA
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Harris, Jonathan. (1990). “The Public Politics of Alek-sandr Nikolaevich Yakovlev, 1983-1989.” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies. Pittsburgh, PA: Center for Russian and East European Studies. Yakovlev, Alexander. (1993). The Fate of Marxism in Russia. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
JONATHAN HARRIS
YALTA CONFERENCE
The Yalta Conference was the second wartime summit meeting between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Mnister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Josef Stalin. It met from February 4 through February 11, 1945, in the Crimean city of Yalta. A mood of optimism prevailed at the conference because German armies were in retreat throughout Europe and victory was assured. The principal agenda item was Germany. Although there were sharp policy differences be1698 tween the three parties, the Yalta Conference reached agreement on most issues, and the Big Three came away convinced that allied unity had been preserved.
Germany, it was agreed, would be divided into three zones of occupation (a fourth zone was carved out of the British and American zones for France). Occupation policy would be made by a Four Power Allied Control Commission to be located in Berlin. Reparations were to be extracted from Germany, with the details to be determined by an Allied Reparations Commission in Moscow. Nazism and German militarism were to be extinguished, and war criminals were to be justly and swiftly punished. Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill are shown laughing in the conference room of Livadia Palace, during the Yalta Conference. ASSOCIATED PRESS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Poland proved to be an intractable problem. Churchill and Roosevelt sought unsuccessfully to persuade Stalin to recognize the London-based government in exile, but he continued to support the government installed by the Soviet Union in Lublin. At most, the Western leaders secured from Stalin a commitment to free and unfettered elections as soon as possible. No decisions were reached re
YALTA CONFERENCE
The “Big Three” at Yalta in February 1945: Winston Churchill, a gravely ill Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Josef Stalin. COURTESY OF THE RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS DIVISION, THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS garding Poland’s postwar boundaries, although it was understood that the eastern boundary would be the Curzon line. As to the liberated countries in Eastern Europe, the conferees pledged in a Declaration on Liberated Europe to respect “the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live.”
A secret protocol stipulated that the Soviet Union would enter the war against Japan within three months after Germany’s surrender. As compensation, Russia’s losses to Japan resulting from the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and 1905 would be restored. These included southern Sakhalin, adjacent islands, and the Kuril Islands. The So
viet Union also received the lease of Port Arthur, internationalization of the port of Dairen, and partial control over the Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian railroads as concessions. Regarding the United Nations, it was agreed that a United Nations conference would be held in the United States on April 25, 1945. The United States and Britain agreed to accept Ukraine and Be-lorussia as original members, thus giving the Soviet Union three votes in the General Assembly. Also, important provisions related to the voting rules of the Security Council were formulated, including a provision for the veto power of the five permanent members.
Because Stalin ultimately succeeded in imposing communist regimes on the peoples of Eastern Europe, some critics have accused Roosevelt of “selling out” Eastern Europe. However, the consensus of scholarly opinion is that the superior military position of the Red Army at the end of the war virtually guaranteed Soviet predominance, regardless of the decisions made at Yalta.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
1699
YANAYEV, GENNADY IVANOVICH
See also: POTSDAM CONFERENCE; WORLD WAR II
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buhite, Russell D. (1986). Decisions at Yalta: An Appraisal of Summit Diplomacy. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources. Clemens, Diane Shaver. (1970). Yalta. New York: Oxford University Press. Mastny,Vojtech. (1979). Russia’s Road to the Cold War: Diplomacy, Warfare, and the Politics of Communism. New York: Columbia University Press. Snell, John L. (1956). The Meaning of Yalta: Big Three Diplomacy and the New Balance of Power. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.
JOSEPH L. NOGEE
conviction-or his inebriation. Along with Yeltsin’s appearance atop a tank, Yanayev and his shaking hands became a central image of the putsch. Yanayev was arrested immediately following the coup’s collapse and was amnestied by the Duma in February 1994. He went on to become a pension fund consultant. See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gorbachev, Mikhail. (1991). The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons. New York: Harper Collins. Remnick, David. (1993). Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. New York: Random House.
ANN E. ROBERTSON
YANAYEV, GENNADY IVANOVICH
(b. 1937), USSR vice president, coup plotter.
Gennady Yanayev graduated from Gorky Agricultural Institute in 1959 and earned a history degree from the All-Union Law Institute in 1967. Before joining the Party in 1962, Yanayev worked in the agro-industry sector. After securing Party membership, he soon began working in the Gorky Komsomol organization (1963-1968). He was promoted to chairman of the USSR Committee of Youth Organizations (1968-1980) and later to deputy chair of the Presidium of the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies (1980-1986). He switched to working in the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions in 1986, becoming chair in 1990.
Yanayev rose following the Twenty-eighth CPSU Party Congress. In July 1990 he was named to the Central Committee and Politburo and given the Central Committee foreign policy portfolio. Following the creation of the Soviet presidency in late 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev nominated Yanayev as his vice president on December 27. The Congress of People’s Deputies approved him on the second ballot. He then resigned from his Central Committee and Politburo posts effective January 31, 1991.
Yanayev disagreed with Gorbachev’s reforms and was the public face of the group that plotted the abortive coup of August 19-21, 1991. He went on international television to claim that, as vice president, he had assumed the acting presidency of the Soviet Union. His quivering hands, constant sniffling, and stilted delivery suggested his lack of
1700
YARLYK
A decree or pronouncement by a Mongol khan.
The yarlyk (Mongolian jarligh; Tartar yarligh) was one of three types of non-fundamental law (jasagh or yasa) pronouncements that had the effect of a regulation or ordinance, the other two being debter (a record of precedence cases for administration and judicial decisions) and bilig (maxims or sayings attributed to Chinghis Khan). The yarlyki provide important information about the running of the Mongol Empire.
From the mid-thirteenth to mid-fifteenth centuries, all Rus princes received yarlyki authorizing their rule. Initially, those yarlyki came from the qaghan in Karakorum, but after Batu established his khanate, they came from Sarai. None of these yarlyki, however, is extant. In the mid-fifteenth century, Basil II began forbidding other Rus princes from receiving the yarlyk from Tatar khans, thus establishing the right of the Moscow grand prince to authorize local princely rule.
In the Rus metropolitan archive are preserved six yarlyki (constituting the so-called Short Collection) considered to be translations into Russian of authentic patents issued from the Qipchaq Khanate: (1) from Khan Tiuliak (Tulunbek) of Ma-mai’s Horde to Metropolitan Mikhail (Mtia) (1379); (2) from Khatun Taydula to the Rus’ princes (1347); (3) from Khan Mengu-Temir to Metropolitan Peter (1308); (4) from Khatun Taydula to Metropolitan Feognost (1343); (5) from Khan Berdibek to Metropolitan Alexei (1357); and (6) from Khatun
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH
Taydula to Metropolitan Alexei (1354). A seventh yarlyk, which purports to be from Khan ?zbeg to Metropolitan Peter (found in the so-called full collection) has been determined to be a sixteenth-century forgery. The yarlyki to the metropolitans affirm the freedom of the Church from taxes and tributes, and declare that the Church’s property should be protected from expropriation or damage as long as Rus churchmen pray for the well-being of the khan and his family. See also: GOLDEN HORDE
DONALD OSTROWSKI
YAROPOLK I
(d. 980), son of Svyatoslav and the grandson of Igor and Olga; fourth grand prince of Kiev.
The date of Yaropolk Svyatoslavich’s birth is unknown, but the Primary Chronicle reports that in 968 he and his two brothers were under Olga’s care. In 970 their father Svyatoslav gave Kiev to Yaropolk, the Derevlyane lands to Oleg, and Novgorod (after Yaropolk and Oleg rejected it) to their half-brother Vladimir. Yaropolk married a Greek woman, a former nun whom Svyatoslav had taken captive. In 973, after the death of his father, Yaropolk became the grand prince of Kiev. In 977, after Oleg killed the son of Yaropolk’s commander Sveneld while on a hunting trip, Yaropolk avenged his death by attacking Oleg. The latter died in battle, and Yaropolk appropriated his domain. When Vladimir learned of Oleg’s fate, he feared for his own life and fled to Scandinavia to seek aid from the Varangians. Yaropolk then appointed his man to Novgorod and became sole ruler in all Rus. In 980 Vladimir returned to Novgorod and attacked Yaropolk because the latter had killed Oleg and refused to divide Oleg’s domain with him. On June 11, 980, Vladimir’s men treacherously killed Yaropolk. Vladimir then took Yaropolk’s pregnant wife to himself, and she gave birth to Svyatopolk, who would later have Vladimir’s sons Boris and Gleb murdered. In 1044 Vladimir’s son Yaroslav “the Wise” exhumed the bodies of Yaropolk and Oleg, baptized them, and buried them in the Church of the Mother of God (the Tithe Church) in Kiev. See also: GRAND PRINCE; KIEVAN RUS; OLGA; PRIMARY CHRONICLE; SVYATOPOLK I; VLADIMIR, ST.; YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dimnik, Martin. (1996). “Succession and Inheritance in Rus’ before 1054.” Mediaeval Studies 58:87-117. Vernadsky, George. (1948). Kievan Russia. New Haven: Yale University Press.
MARTIN DIMNIK
YAROSLAV VLADIMIROVICH
(c. 980-1054), Yaroslav “the wise”; grand prince of Kiev which he secured for his family; the main agent of the so-called Golden Age of Kievan Rus.
Yaroslav’s father was Vladimir Svyatoslavich, the Christianizer of Rus, and his mother was Princess Rogneda of Polotsk, of Scandinavian ancestry. Vladimir first sent Yaroslav to Rostov, but around 1010 transferred him to Novgorod. While there, he developed close ties with the townspeople and the Varangians of Scandinavia. He also minted coins and issued two charters granting the Nov-gorodians special privileges. In 1014 Yaroslav rebelled against his father by refusing to pay the annual tribute. He summone
d Varangians to help him fend off the expected punitive attack, but before Vladimir could set out from Kiev, he died. Svyatopolk, his eldest surviving son succeeded him and decided to consolidate his rule by eliminating his half-brothers, beginning with Boris, Gleb, and Svyatoslav.
After Yaroslav learned of his father’s death and Svyatopolk’s treachery, he marched south with the Varangians and the Novgorodians. In 1016 his forces confronted Svyatopolk and the Pechenegs around Lyubech and defeated them. Svyatopolk fled to the Poles, and Yaroslav occupied Kiev. In 1018, however, Svyatopolk returned with his father-in-law, Boleslaw I, and forced Yaroslav to flee to Novgorod. In 1019, after the king returned home, Yaroslav evicted Svyatopolk from Kiev once again and occupied it a second time. Nevertheless, his rule was not secure. Taking advantage of his absence from Novgorod, Bryacheslav Izyaslavich of Polotsk captured the town and took many captives, forcing Yaroslav to attack him and free the Novgorodians. A greater threat to his power came in 1024, when Yaroslav’s brother Mstislav of Tmutarakan attempted to take Kiev from him while he was looking after northern affairs. Yaroslav brought the Novgorodians against Mstislav, but the latter defeated him at Listven west of Chernigov. All the