--- Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> wrote: Read this? A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander N. Yakovlev Yale University Press, 2002 --
Nope. Actually I find Yakovlev to be a bit boring. (He really liked Putin, if I recollect correctly from his recent Argumenty i Fakty interview.) Limonov says somewhere, I think in Moya Politicheskaya Avtobiografiya, that the difference between him and Yakovlev is that the former experienced the West living on welfare, and the latter from behind the window of a Cadillac.*
Gorby discusses Yak. and Lenin in the following recent radio interview (snippet).
RADIO INTERVIEW WITH MIKHAIL GORBACHEV EKHO MOSKVY RADIO, 20:00, APRIL 26, 2005 SOURCE: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE
*** Gorbachev: We have a running argument with Yakovlev. I ask him, why are you being so harsh on Lenin? Almost calling him a bandit.
Ganapolsky: Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev?
Gorbachev: Yes, yes. After four years Lenin declared that we had taken the wrong road and made a major mistake and we should revise our policy drastically, small and medium property, private trade, concessions and cooperatives and so on sprung up. This is Lenin for me. In a critical situation, to force Lenin to change his point of view... You know that he could split parties, newspapers, anything, but in the event the man realized that the wrong path had been chosen. He said before the Revolution that the proletariat would win power through democracy.
Venediktov: Yes, yes.
Gorbachev: And that it governs through democracy. History did not work out as he intended to. It followed a different course. And they seized power and established a Bolshevik dictatorship. But he saw what the "war Communism" and all that led to.
And Stalin took over after his death. And Lenin's letters, etc., had been hidden from everyone. When did we learn about them? I still didn't know about them when I was at university. Stalin was everything -- the fundamentals of Marxism and Leninism -- there was a thick gray volume, he wrote it on the basis of war Communism and he buried it. He overcame Bukharin, Kamenev and Trotsky. And so, the path of dictatorship was embarked on, a rejection of democracy. And we lived under a totalitarian system for 30 years. These were not just authoritarian methods, they were totalitarian. It had its own ideological instruments. So, why do we deny the current rulers --
Venediktov: Is Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin) a latter-day Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin)?
Gorbachev: Hold on a minute, hold on. Vladimir Vladimirovich is Vladimir Vladimirovich. ***
*Hey, John Mage, here's Limonov in his eXile t-shirt (bottom of the page): http://www.ogoniok.ru/4915/3/
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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