The Architect amidst the Ruins (Russian: Архитектор у развалин, other versions: Архитектор развалин - 'The Architect of the Ruins', Архитектору развалины - 'To the Architect of the Ruins') was an open letter

Open letter

An open letter is a letter that is intended to be read by a wide audience, or a letter intended for an individual, but that is nonetheless widely distributed intentionally....

 by Gennady Zyuganov

Gennady Zyuganov

Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov is a Russian politician, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , Chairman of the Union of Communist Parties - Communist Party of the Soviet Union , deputy of the State Duma , and a member of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe...

, then a relatively little known party functionary, to Alexander Yakovlev

Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev

Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev was a Soviet politician and historian who was a Soviet governmental official in the 1980s and a member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...

, the ideologist of Perestroika

Perestroika

Perestroika was a political movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during 1980s, widely associated with the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev...

, also known as the Architect of Perestroika. The letter was published in the hardline

Hardline

In politics, hardline refers to the doctrine, policy, and posturing of a government or political body as being absolutist and sometimes authoritarian. The hardline position is usually extremist and uncompromising....

 newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya on 7 May 1991. The letter argued that Perestroika caused disintegration of the state, democratization resulted in a 'war of legislation', glasnost

Glasnost

Glasnost was the policy of maximal publicity, openness, and transparency in the activities of all government institutions in the Soviet Union, together with freedom of information, introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev in the second half of the 1980s...

 turned out to be a weapon in the psychological war against the Soviet people, 'as in distant past', a new alliance of obscurantists, lumpen

Lumpen

Lumpen can refer to:* Lumpen , a Chicago-based art and politics magazine* Lumpenproletariat, a term in Marxist economics* Lumpenbourgeoisie* Swedish slang for military service, adopted by armed forces as a near-formal word....

ized intelligentsia and criminals was coming into being.

The letter was perceived as the start of the campaign to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Gorbachev

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...

. It was later reported (Oleg Shenin

Oleg Shenin

Oleg Semyonovich Shenin was the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , which should not be confused with the larger UCP-CPSU....

) that the text itself had been written by a KGB

KGB

The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...

team, and Zyuganov's signature just suited the goals.