YAKOVLEV, ALEKSANDR N(IKOLAYEVICH)

born Dec. 2, 1923, Yaroslavl, Russia, U.S.S.R. economist, propagandist, and Communist Party official who was a member of the Politburo from 1987 to 1990. Yakovlev served in the Red Army (194143) during World War II, became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1944, and graduated from Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute in 1946. From that time he held several CPSU positions, first as an editor for a regional party newspaper, then as a lecturer at a CPSU school and as a member of staff on the Central Committee. In the latter capacity, he rose from an instructor in the propaganda department to acting head of the department (196573). From 1973 to 1983 he was the Soviet ambassador to Canada. While there he impressed future Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, whose trusted aide he later became. He worked for two years as the director of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of World Economics and International Relations. In 1986 he was elected to the Secretariat of the Central Committee, and in June 1987 he became a full member of the Politburo. He is believed to have been instrumental in the development of the policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), which were the key concepts of the early years of Gorbachev's administration. In March 1990, as CPSU secretary of foreign policy, Yakovlev was appointed to a 16-member presidential council, a position he held until July of that year. He gave up both his Politburo and Secretariat seats in July.