An insider witness to the collapse of reform
He recalled that his task had “extended the history of the Soviet state by one day.”
Andrei Grachev was a specialist in international affairs and a journalist who worked on the international meaning and domestic politics of Soviet reform. After the August 1991 coup, he became Mikhail Gorbachev’s aide and final presidential press secretary, observing at close range both negotiations to preserve the Union and the disintegration of its state institutions. His memoirs and deposited personal papers document the tension between perestroika’s promise of democratic renewal and the acceleration of the Union’s collapse.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1964–1966Referent, Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSR
- 1966–1973Soviet representative at the Budapest editorial office of Youth of the World
- 1973First deputy chairman, Committee of Youth Organizations of the USSR
- 1973–1978Referent, CPSU Central Committee International Department
- 1978–1989CPSU Central Committee Department of Foreign Political Propaganda
- 1989–1991Deputy head, CPSU Central Committee International Department
- 1991Aide and press secretary to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev
- 1992–현재Journalist, political commentator and author
Related historical events
The Last Press Secretary's Record and the Archive Deposit
From September to December 1991 Grachev served as aide and press secretary to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, holding weekly briefings for the press. In his own account, the post let him observe the President and his apparatus at close range every day, attend all official events and informal meetings, and watch the irreversible disintegration of the union state, which ended in December 1991. The briefing record he left documents the pace of events in late 1991, the reckoning with the national question, the search for an economic reform plan, and finally an awareness of the inevitability of the country's breakup. On 20 December 2012, more than twenty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Grachev deposited his personal papers with the National Security Archive in Washington; the first part of the collection was the transcript record of his press conferences from September to December 1991, and it became a permanent fund alongside the collections of Anatoly Chernyaev and Sergo Mikoyan. As an insider witness, he thus continued to work as a witness and a source of documents, helping to build the research base for the study of perestroika's final months.