MOSCOW, October 18 (RIA Novosti) - Alexander Yakovlev, one of the ideologists of reforms in the late 1980s in the Soviet Union died Tuesday in Moscow at the age of 82, the TV channel Rossiya said.
He had been ill for a long time.
Yakovlev had a long and successful political career, but came to particular prominence under the liberal reform program known as "perestroika," which is literally translated as "rebuilding," under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Born on December 2, 1923, in a village in the Yaroslavl region in central Russia, Yakovlev held several senior posts in the Soviet Union, including a ten-year term as ambassador to Canada, before rising to the top of Gorbachev's team in the 1980s.
Yakovlev advocated taking responsibility for the past crimes of communism and headed the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression.
