The last ideology secretary who dismantled ideology opened the spetskhran and abolished party orthodoxy
In autumn 1988 he obtained Solzhenitsyn's works through the KGB. He admired One Day in the Life but dismissed Gulag Archipelago as mere polemic — then opened the spetskhran and returned Solzhenitsyn's published books to the open shelves.
A peasant's son from Yaroslavl, Medvedev earned a doctorate in economics from Leningrad University, rose through the propaganda and science departments, and became CC secretary in 1986 and Politburo member with the ideology portfolio in 1988. He repealed Zhdanov's 1946 crackdown on the journals Zvezda and Leningrad, abolished subscription limits on periodicals, and returned forbidden books, including works by Solzhenitsyn and Trotsky, from the spetskhran to open library shelves. He replaced CPSU history and scientific communism courses with 20th-century socio-political history and served on the commission re-examining Stalin-era repressions. A core Gorbachev intimate, he left all posts with the Soviet collapse and spent his remaining decades as a researcher at the Gorbachev Foundation.
Career Timeline
- 1951–68Graduates Leningrad University economics; professor, doctorate
- 1968–70Secretary, Leningrad city party committee
- 1970–78Deputy head, CC Propaganda Department
- 1978–83Rector, CC Academy of Social Sciences
- 1983–86Head, CC Science and Education Department
- 1986–90CC Secretary, then Ideological Commission chair and Politburo member
- 1990–91Member, USSR Presidential Council
- 1992–2025Researcher, Gorbachev Foundation and RAS Institute of Economics