Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyayev

Anatoly Sergejewitsch Tschernjajew ( Russian Анато́лий Серге́евич Черня́ев ; born May 25, 1921 in Moscow , Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ; † March 12, 2017 in Moscow, Russia ) was a Soviet political advisor .

From February 1986 until the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, he was a security policy advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev in his office as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and later as President of the Soviet Union.

Chernyayev was considered a passionate fighter for military de-escalation during the détente and for the opening of the Soviet Union. He wrote detailed diaries about his experiences and observations in the years 1972–1991, which give deep insights into the innermost circles of power in the Soviet Union.

Life

Anatoly Tschernjajew was born in Moscow in 1921 at the time of the Russian Civil War . His father Sergei Chernyayev was an engineer and his grandfather served as a general in the tsarist army . In his childhood he was privately tutored in German and French. Despite an asthmatic illness, Chernyayev served in the Soviet Army during 38 months of World War II . At the end of the war he was platoon commander with the rank of captain in a ski battalion that had since been wiped out and was in the Baltic States at the end of the war . After the war, Chernyayev received his doctorate in history from Moscow State University in 1948 , where he also taught from 1951 to 1958. He then worked in Prague as an editor for the magazine Problems of Peace and Socialism until 1961 . During this time he made contacts with liberal Soviet intellectuals. After his return to the Soviet Union, Chernyayev was appointed Deputy Director of the Department of International Affairs in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1970. In 1972 he also began to write a diary about his professional and private life. Mikhail Gorbachev appointed him his security policy advisor in 1986. He held this position until the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991. In the period after that, Chernyayev supported the establishment of the Gorbachev Foundation and published several books. Chernyayev died of a respiratory disease in 2017.

Tschernjajew was married to Genja Solomonowna Wainberg for 47 years, who died in 2005. Together they had a daughter, Anna Tschernjajewa. As a result, he was in a relationship with Lyudmila Pavlovna Rudakowa until his death.

Political influence

After his time in Prague, Chernyaev changed his personal views and took a profoundly critical attitude towards the Soviet system.

As an advisor to Gorbachev, he campaigned for nuclear disarmament and urged him to contact the then US President Ronald Reagan . As a result of his efforts, Reagan and Gorbachev held a summit meeting in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik in October 1986 . The two heads of government agreed there on the " zero solution ", which provided for the removal of all medium-range nuclear missiles from Europe .

Tschernjajew also campaigned for an end to the Afghan war and the withdrawal of Soviet troops and called for the reunification of Germany early on . He also tried with great commitment to convince Gorbachev of the idea of ​​bringing the Soviet Union closer to Europe again.

Awards

Anatoly Chernyayev received various military and civilian awards during his lifetime.

• Order of Lenin , highest honor in the Soviet Union
• Order of the Great Patriotic War , 1st and 2nd class
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor , 1st and 2nd class
• Order of Friendship between Nations
• Medal "For Merit in Combat"
• Medal "For the Defense of Leningrad"
• Medal "Victory over Germany "

Publications

In 2004 he donated his handwritten diaries with the transcriptions of his partner Lyudmila Rudakova to the National Security Archive of George Washington University to make his notes available to the public.

More publishments:

• The last years of a world power. Inside the Kremlin. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , Stuttgart 1993. ISBN 978-3-421-06646-6 .
• with Mikhail Gorbachev and Wadim Sagladin : The new way of thinking. Politics in the Age of Globalization. Goldmann , Munich 1997. ISBN 978-3-442-12754-2 .
• My Six Years with Gorbachev. Penn State University Press, University Park 2000. ISBN 0-271-02029-6 .
• My German diary. The German Question in the Central Committee of the CPSU (1972–1991). Elbe-Dnjepr-Verlag, Klitzschen 2005. ISBN 978-3-933395-57-3 .
• with Aleksandr Galkin, Andreas Hilger and Joachim Glaubitz: Michail Gorbatschow and the German question. Soviet documents 1986 - 1991. Oldenbourg , Munich 2011. ISBN 978-3-486-58654-1 .

literature

• Gaddis, John Lewis: The Cold War. A new story. Siedler, Munich 2007. ISBN 3-570-55057-5 .
• Gorbachev, Michail: Memories . Siedler , Berlin 1995. ISBN 3-88680-524-7 .

Web links

• The National Security Archive: In Memoriam Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev 1921-2017 . George Washington University, March 13, 2017.
• Andrew Roth: Anatoly Chernyaev, influential foreign policy aide to Mikhail Gorbachev, dies at 95. The Washington Post , March 15, 2017.
• Scott Shane: Anatoly S. Chernyaev, Key Aide and Gorbachev's 'Alter Ego', Dies at 95. The New York Times , March 23, 2017.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Andrew Roth: Anatoly Chernyaev, influential foreign policy aide to Mikhail Gorbachev, dies at 95. The Washington Post, March 15, 2017, accessed May 4, 2017 . 
2. ^ Anatoly Tschernjajew: The Diary of Anatoly S. Chernyaev, 1986 . Ed .: The National Security Archive. 2007, p. 13 (English).
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev 1921 - 2017. The National Security Archive, March 17, 2017, accessed on May 4, 2017 . 
4. ↑ СЮЖЕТЫ «Никто в атаке не кричал:« За Родину! За Сталина! » Все кричали: «.. твою мать !!!" , Novaya Gazeta, April 11, 2010
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Scott Shane: Anatoly S. Chernyaev, Key Aide and Gorbachev's 'Alter Ego', this at 95th The New York Times, March 23, 2017, accessed May 4, 2017 (English). 
6. ↑ John Lewis Gaddis : The Cold War. A new story . Siedler, Munich 2007, p. 286 .