1930–2005
○ Natural causes
Editor of Moscow News who led the charge in breaking Soviet taboos during the glasnost era
「You can't go to bed a mute and wake up talking」: on the incremental widening of what could be said as censorship eased.
A Moscow Historical Archive Institute graduate, he worked as an Izvestia correspondent and founding editor of Zhurnalist magazine before his appointment in August 1986 as deputy chairman of Novosti Press Agency and editor-in-chief of Moscow News. He transformed the weekly from a 35,000-copy English-language propaganda sheet into a glasnost flagship printing 3 million copies in eight languages. Week after week he broke taboos (Stalin's purges, the Afghan war, KGB operations, religion) and during the August 1991 coup he rallied 11 independent newspapers to produce the joint edition Obshchaya Gazeta in defiance of the putschists.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1954Graduates from Moscow Historical Archive Institute
- 1956–1966Reporter at Moskovskaya Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Izvestia
- 1967–1968Founds and edits Zhurnalist magazine
- 1968–1985Izvestia special correspondent, Prague bureau
- 1986–1991Deputy chairman of APN, editor-in-chief of Moscow News
- 1991–1992Chairman, All-Union and Russian State TV and Radio
- 1993–2002Publisher of Obshchaya Gazeta
Related historical events
- 1979–1989The Soviet-Afghan WarEditor who broke the taboo on Afghan War coverageAt Moscow News, he broke the taboo on covering the Afghan war.
- 1985–1991Perestroika and GlasnostEditor of a glasnost flagshipHe transformed Moscow News into a glasnost flagship published in eight languages.
- 1991The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSRJournalist who opposed the coupDuring the August 1991 coup, he rallied 11 independent newspapers to publish a joint edition in defiance of the putschists.
Editing Moscow News and expanding glasnost
From 1986 to 1991, Yakovlev edited the weekly Moscow News and organized reporting that supported reform and openness during perestroika. Articles addressed the Stalin-era purges, privileges enjoyed by Communist Party officials, the consequences of the Chernobyl disaster, and abuses by the KGB, bringing issues outside the official account to a mass readership. On publication Wednesdays, readers queued outside the paper’s offices on Moscow’s Pushkin Square. Colleague Viktor Loshak recalled that Yakovlev edited by adding ideas and arguments to journalists’ work, rather than merely correcting copy.
Yakovlev did not initially set out to abolish the socialist system. Colleagues recalled that he saw reform as a way to achieve socialism with a human face, and concluded through the process of changing the system that this goal was unattainable. In 1991, Moscow News published a protest editorial, signed by Yakovlev and others, against the Soviet military suppression of Lithuania’s independence movement; Yakovlev then left the Communist Party. On the second day of the August coup that year, he brought together editors from 11 liberal newspapers to produce a two-page joint issue of Obshchaya Gazeta. Its headline read, “Democracy must learn to defend itself.” After the coup, he also helped establish the Glasnost Defense Foundation.