MOSCOW — He has the charisma of cold oatmeal and carries the political baggage of loyal service to seven failed regimes dating back to the dictatorship of Josef Stalin.
But Alexander N. Yakovlev, godfather of \o7 glasnost \f7 and guru to Presidents Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Boris N. Yeltsin, is not quite ready to retreat from Russia's turbulent political arena.
Having fallen with the political fortunes of Gorbachev and strayed from the fold of Yeltsin, Yakovlev is now taking on the task of defining a political center in hopes of ensuring a democratic victory in December's parliamentary elections.
At 71, the career chameleon and quintessential political survivor is once again reinventing himself to secure a role in the next phase of doing the same for Russia.
The moon-faced Yakovlev has established the Russian Party for Social Democracy and aims to herd this country's proliferation of parties and movements into "a two- or three-party system, like they have in civilized countries," he says.
He has yet to identify his party's preferred candidates for president or prime minister, and his attempt to unite the scattered forces of reform and democracy faces competition from rival blocs being organized by Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, liberal economist Grigory A. Yavlinsky and parliamentary Speaker Ivan P. Rybkin.
And with a name as common in Russia as John Smith is in the United States, Yakovlev also suffers a personal identity crisis. He is hampered further by popular revulsion for all of the established political forces he has belonged to, from the much-detested Communist Party to Gorbachev's now-despised \o7 perestroika \f7 movement to Yeltsin's increasingly reclusive and bureaucratic leadership.
Yet few are ready to write off Yakovlev's chances for success in his quest to become kingmaker, once he settles on who should be king.
The old pol insists that he has no personal aspirations in the June, 1966, presidential elections, or even for a seat in the Duma, the virtually irrelevant lower house of Parliament, in December's vote.
But he demurs, with a corroborating "we'll see," when asked if he seeks to choreograph the confluence of forces supporting reform.
"Despite the terrible things going on in the country--the war in Chechnya, the fight over Crimea--the situation is actually becoming more stable," says Yakovlev, explaining why he has re-emerged from semi-retirement. "But this is no credit to the government. People are simply tired."
