Abstract
The gloves were coming off in the political struggle. At the June 1987 party plenum, Yakovlev, Central Committee Secretary with responsibility for ideology, was promoted to full membership of the Politburo, a challenge to Ligachev and his backers. Immediately after the plenum, Yakovlev intensified his anti-nationalist campaign, now perceived by some as designed not only to weaken the nationalists, but to attack opponents of reform within the leadership inclined to adopt nationalist rhetoric. He condemned ‘unhealthy mutual [national] relations, nationalism and chauvinism, Zionism and anti-Semitism’ and ‘religious prejudices’ and insisted there should be no ‘waxing lyrical about what is reactionary in the history and culture of the past’.1 At the long-awaited plenum of the USSR Writers’ Union on nationalities questions, First Secretary Karpov, no doubt at Yakovlev’s behest, condemned nationalism in his official report.2
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Notes
J. Waller, Secret Empire: The KGB in Russia Today, Westview Press, Boulder, Colo., and Oxford, 1994, p. 51.
G. Semenov, ‘Chertovo koleso’, NS, No. 1, 1988, pp. 24–116; No. 2, 1988, pp. 21–115.
I. Vasil’ev, ‘Ne kosi travu do tsveteniya’, Sovetskaya kul’tura, No. 110, September 12th, 1987, p. 6.
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A. Kuz’min, ‘K kakomu khramu ishchem my dorogu?’, NS, No. 3, 1988, pp. 154–64
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M. Lyubomudrov, ‘Uchimsya demokratii?’, NS, No. 5, 1988, pp. 190–1.
J. Wishnevsky, ‘The Origins of Pamyat’, Survey, Vol. 30, No. 3, October 1988, p. 90.
Y. Brudny, ‘The Heralds of Opposition to Perestroyka’, Soviet Economy, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1989, p. 182.
J. Wishnevsky, ‘Nash sovremennik Provides Focus for “Opposition Party”’, Report on the USSR, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 20th, 1989, p. 2.
A. Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, p. 175.
J. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1993, pp. 15, 127.
W. Laqueur, The Dream that Failed, Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 1994, p. 155.
J. Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1995, pp. 383–4.
M. Antonov, V. Klykov and I. Shafarevich, ‘Pis’mo v sekretariat pravleniya Soyuza Pisatelei RFSFR’, Literaturnaya Rossiya August 4th, 1989. See Brudny, Reinventing Russia pp. 230–1.
A. Yakovlev, Omut pamyati, Vagrius, Moscow, 2000, p. 264.
J. Lester, Modern Tsars and Princes. The Struggle for Hegemony in Russia, Verso, London and New York, 1995, pp. 133–4.
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© 2004 Simon Cosgrove
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Cosgrove, S. (2004). Ligachev and the Conservative Counter-Offensive. In: Russian Nationalism and the Politics of Soviet Literature. Studies in Russia and East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230006003_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230006003_7
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