Alexander Yakovlev (Russian politician) by his friend Yevgeny Primakov in 1985. When Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Yakovlev became a senior advisor, helping to shape Soviet foreign policy by advocating Soviet non-intervention in Eastern Europe, and accompanying Gorbachev on his five summit meetings with President of the United States Ronald Reagan. Domestically, he argued in favour of the reform programs that became known as glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) and played a key role in executing those policies. In 1987, the Russian nationalist organization Pamyat sent a letter entitled "Stop Yakovlev!" to the plenum of
History of Western civilization States capitalist economic system to outproduce the communist Russians. The United States military was in a state of low moral after its loss in the Vietnam War, and President Reagan began a huge effort to out-produce the Soviets in military production and technology. In 1985, a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev took power. Gorbachev, knowing that the Soviet Union could no longer compete economically with the United States, implemented a number of reforms granting his citizens freedom of speech and introducing some capitalist reforms. Gorbachev and America's staunch anti-Communist president Ronald Reagan were even able to negotiate treaties limiting each