was arrested. After several months of interrogation, he agreed to play
an important role in the trial of Nikolai Bukharin and the Rightists in
February 1938, confessing to being an avowed enemy of the people
and a Fascist spy. Despite promises that his life would be spared, he
was shot less than 48 hours after the trial ended.
Yagoda saw himself as a secret and terrible servant of Stalin and
the regime. He wrote the writer Maksim Gorky: “Like a dog on a
chain, I lie by the gate of the republic and chew through the throat
of anyone who raises a hand against the peace.” His service has not
been rewarded by posterity any more than it was by his boss. Un-
like the others tried and shot in February 1938, Yagoda has never
been rehabilitated. His ultimate failure was an inability to meet the
demands of Stalin, not an excess of mercy for those unfortunate en-
emies of the people who fell into his hands. Following his execu-
tion, his wife, mother, father, and two sisters were either shot or
perished in the gulag.YAKOVLEV, ALEKSANDR NIKOLAEVICH (1923– ). A deco-
rated veteran of World War II, Yakovlev went into Communist
Partywork after recovering from severe wounds. In 1970 he was
purged from his post in the Central Committee and posted to
Canada as ambassador because of his opposition to hardline Rus-
sophile and anti-Semitic attitudes within the Leonid Brezhnev
leadership. During his long exilein Canada, Yakovlev met Mikhail
Gorbachevand influenced his attitude toward reform. From 1985
to 1989, Yakovlev played a crucial role in the Politburo as the ar-
chitect of glasnostand perestroika. Yakovlev was a bete noire for
traditionalists like KGBChair Vladimir Kryuchkov, who publicly
excoriated him as an American agent. Bowing to pressure, Gor-
bachev forced Yakovlev out of the leadership in late 1990.
Yakovlev was lucky that the 1991 August putschfailed; he cer-
tainly would have been prosecuted had it succeeded.
Following the collapse of the system he served but in the end de-
spised, Yakovlev took on the mission of rehabilitating those re-
pressed during the Soviet era. His books, which have been published
in the United States and Russia, have been the best short studies of
Soviet repression. Conservatives and anti-Semites continue to attack
him; he has been labeled a secret Zionist whose real name in Yakob-290 •YAKOVLEV, ALEKSANDR NIKOLAEVICH (1923– )06-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 290