Grachev Andrey Biography

The book based on personal memories and documents allows the reader to reflect with the author about the fate of the Soviet experiment and about the unfulfilled hopes of perestroika. On the pages of the book, the author raises many acute questions to which we all look for answers: why is the restructuring in which the population of the country, instead of renewing the political system and saving the Union state, was so enthusiastic, accelerated its collapse?

Why, twenty -five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the “Iron Curtain”, Russia has not become part of the common European house, and the world, although it avoided nuclear suicide, has not got out of the psychological cage of the confrontation inherited from the Cold War? The book represents a valuable source to study the period of the Cold War, the political struggle within the Soviet leadership in the last years of the USSR, and the development of new thinking in the direction of the humanistic and liberal social democratic platform.

Photos from the book of N. Andreev "Life of Gorbachev" on December 20, more than 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the national security archive opens a new personal collection.

Andrei Serafimovich Grachev, the last press secretary of President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, transfers documents to his personal archive to our collection, where they will become a permanent fund along with the funds of Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyaev and Sergey Anastasovich Mikoyan. The first part of the collection of Grachev will be the transcript of his press conferences of September-December of the year.

These documents give researchers the opportunity to look at those days when the fate of the Union State was decided when the majority of the population and politicians still believed that the new, reformed and democratic union was possible. In these press conferences - the rapid avalanche of events of the end of the year, understanding the national question, an attempt to develop a plan for economic reform, and as a result - an understanding of the inevitability of the country's collapse.

The second part of the collection is the materials prepared by Grachev during his work in the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, his analytical notes and performances. The collection will be replenished as materials arrive. Grachev’s preface with great pleasure and gratitude accepted the proposal of the National Security Archive in Washington to transfer to him for storage and for the subsequent publication on the Internet of the Internet my personal documents related to the last months of the administration of the President Gorbachev, which preceded it as the resignation and final collapse of the USSR, as a single state.

In these months, I fulfilled at his request the function of his assistant and official spokesman. This position allowed me to observe the activities of the president and his apparatus daily in close proximity, to attend all the official events and unofficial meetings of the President with a wide circle of Soviet and foreign state leaders and public figures, representing a diverse spectrum of political positions and observe the irreversible process of the collapse of the Union State, which ended in December.

As a press secretary, I accompanied the president during his last foreign visits, as well as trips around the country and had numerous meetings with representatives of Soviet and foreign media. My responsibilities also included the holding of weekly briefings for the press accredited in Moscow and commenting on behalf of the president of those dramatic events that became the result of the adventurous attempt of the August coup and ultimately led to the disruption of its large -scale political project of perestroika, which was a unique chance of the democratic transformation of Soviet society and the state and establishing a partnership and establishing relations of the partnership and the establishment of relations between the partnership and the establishment of relations Trust with its partners in the USA and Western Europe.

I will be glad if documents related to this unique historical period in the life of my country and world history and my personal evidence will be preserved for future researchers, as well as for everyone who may interest these events, the atmosphere, the inconsistency and emotional richness of these unforgettable days. Andrei Grachev, December 14, Paris from the first speech as a press secretary good afternoon, dear colleagues.

I apologize for being late. I want to hope that in our next meeting, in any case, I can be more punctual. What do you understand, the only thing that a haze or may excuse me is that I was delayed during a meeting with the President of the USSR M. Gorbachev, so I hope that your expectation will be at least to some extent rewarded. For those with whom we are not yet familiar, I will appear myself.

My name is Grachev Andrey Serafimovich. Probably, anticipating your questions, I will say a few words about myself. I was born in G. was engaged in journalism and political activities.Well, those of you who followed the literature on international issues may have met my publications on various top topics presses here.