Soviet Union Not Just Another Pretty Face

By James O. Jackson/Moscow

As the 1,500-member Supreme Soviet, the country's largely ceremonial parliament, met last week to endorse the sweeping economic and political reforms approved a few days earlier by the Communist Party Central Committee, Moscow's intelligentsia was buoyant over another Mikhail Gorbachev initiative: a Marxist propaganda specialist, who has been known to make virulent attacks on the U.S., was promoted to the ruling Politburo. Normally that would cause groans among the intellectual elite, not cheers. But this propagandist is Alexander Yakovlev, and his promotion during the Central Committee meeting to full membership in the Politburo is being widely interpreted as a victory for liberalization. Yakovlev, 63, is regarded as the architect of glasnost (openness) and a leading champion of greater artistic and literary freedom.

Yakovlev's elevation positions him to compete with Yegor Ligachev, 66, chief ideologist, for the post of No. 2 man in the party. "It will now be more difficult for Ligachev's office to interfere in the decisions of editors," said a Moscow journalist. Many intellectuals and Western diplomats believe Yakovlev may already have edged out Ligachev to become the party's unofficial "second secretary," a position of great power that is usually held by the chief ideologist.

A jowly, beetle-browed apparatchik, Yakovlev hardly seems the type to blossom amid the flash and dynamism of the Gorbachev era. Officials in agitprop (agitation and propaganda), his longtime career, rarely end up in top Kremlin jobs. Trained as a teacher, Yakovlev became a professional party worker following combat duty in World War II. After becoming acting head of the party's propaganda department in 1973, he was on the losing side of an obscure ideological dispute. As punishment, he spent ten years as Ambassador to Canada.

That exile came to an abrupt end when Yakovlev organized a 1983 Canadian visit for Gorbachev, who was then party secretary in charge of agriculture. Shortly afterward, Yakovlev returned to the Soviet capital as head of a think tank and later as chief of the propaganda department. A collateral duty was advising Gorbachev on the handling of the press and the arts. In that capacity, Yakovlev whipped up support for glasnost and deserves much of the credit for Gorbachev's current high standing among Soviet intellectuals.

Yakovlev is also regarded as the behind-the-scenes choreographer of the successful Mikhail and Raisa road show. He accompanied the Gorbachevs on their first official foreign trip -- to London in 1984 -- and then to Geneva and Reykjavik. The payoff has been measurable. "Look what has been happening in West European attitudes toward the Soviet Union," said a diplomatic specialist on Soviet propaganda. "The opinion polls tell you why Yakovlev was promoted."

One such survey, conducted by the U.S. Information Agency in late May, found that in Britain, France and West Germany, overwhelming majorities believe the U.S.S.R. deserves more credit than the U.S. for progress in arms control. Most respondents even believe, erroneously, that the Soviets originated the "zero option" proposal for eliminating mediumrange missiles in Europe.

If Yakovlev is in fact the man responsible for such public relations successes, he may have gained some useful perspectives long before his decade in Canada: he studied at Columbia University as an exchange student in 1959. But the experience did not make him an Americanophile. Yakovlev has written extensively and venomously of the U.S. as an imperialist predator "intoxicated with the destructive power of atom bombs." It is possible, however, that Yakovlev's writings reflect views other than his own. Some of his work may have been ghostwritten, a common practice among Soviet officials. Former U.S. Ambassador Arthur Hartman once told Yakovlev that he had read one of his vehemently anti-American tracts. "I'd like to sit down with you sometime and argue about it," Hartman said. "Oh," Yakovlev replied mildly. "In that case perhaps I should read it."