Yuri Andropov

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov Ю́рий Влади́мирович Андро́пов
File:Andropov1.jpg
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
In office November 12, 1982 – February 9, 1984
Preceded by	Leonid Brezhnev
Succeeded by	Konstantin Chernenko
9th Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR
In office June 16, 1983 – February 9, 1984
Preceded by	Vasily Kuznetsov (acting)
Succeeded by	Vasily Kuznetsov (acting)
4th Chairman of the KGB
In office 1967–1982
Preceded by	Vladimir Semichastny
Succeeded by	Vitaly Fyodorchuk
Personal details
Born	(1914-06-15)June 15, 1914 Stavropol, then Russian Empire
Died	(1984-02-09)February 9, 1984 Moscow, Russian SFSR
Nationality	Soviet
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Spouse	Tatyana Andropova (died November 1991)

File:Andropov9maj.jpeg

Andropov, then the LKSM KFSSR First Secretary, speaks at the May 9, 1945, victory celebrations

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (Russian: Ю́рий Влади́мирович Андро́пов, Yury Vladimirovich Andropov) (June 15 [O.S. June 2] 1914 – February 9, 1984) was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the CPSU from November 12, 1982 until his death just fifteen months later.

Early life

Andropov was the son of a railway official. Both his parents died early and he went to work at the age of 14. He was educated at the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical College before he joined Komsomol in 1930. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1939 and was First Secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol in the Soviet Karelo-Finnish Republic from 1940 to 1944. During World War II, Andropov took part in partisan guerrilla activities. From 1944 onwards, he left Komsomol for party work. In 1947 he was elected Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (bolshevik) of the Karelo-Finnish SSR. He moved to Moscow in 1951 and joined the party secretariat. In 1954, he became the Soviet Ambassador to Hungary.

Controversy and later publications on the topic

Since the time he was elected General Secretary of the CPSU, there has been speculation and controversy about his past. Files of Andropov showed that he adapted his biography to the demands of the Bolshevik times. He made himself a son of an Ossetian proletarian, when he was actually from a rich Jewish bourgeois family. According to the files, Andropov was not accurate at first while inventing his family's proletarian past. He was questioned at least four times in the 1930s because of the discrepancies in several forms he filled. Each time he managed to evade commissions that checked his background. The final version of his biography stated that he was the son of a railway official and was probably born in Nagutskoye, Stavropol Guberniya, Imperial Russia. Nevertheless, later publications show that he actually came from a Jewish family. His father, Vladimir Liberman, died in 1919. His mother, Yevgenia Fainstein, was a daughter of a rich Jewish merchant.

Suppression of the Hungarian Revolution

In 1954, Andropov became the Soviet Ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. After these events, Andropov suffered from a "Hungarian complex", according to historian Christopher Andrew: "he had watched in horror from the windows of his embassy as officers of the hated Hungarian security service were strung up from lampposts. Andropov remained haunted for the rest of his life by the speed with which an apparently all-powerful Communist one-party state had begun to topple. When other Communist regimes later seemed at risk - in Prague in 1968, in Kabul in 1979, in Warsaw in 1981, he was convinced that, as in Budapest in 1956, only armed force could ensure their survival"

Andropov played a key role in crushing the Hungarian Revolution. He convinced a reluctant Nikita Khrushchev that military intervention was necessary . He deceived Imre Nagy and other Hungarian leaders that the Soviet government did not order an attack on Hungary at the very moment of this attack. The Hungarian leaders were arrested and Nagy executed.

Director of the KGB

Andropov returned to Moscow to head the Department for Liaison with Communist and Workers' Parties in Socialist Countries (1957–1967). In 1961, he was elected full member of the CPSU Central Committee and was promoted to the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee in 1962. In 1967, he was relieved of his work in the Central Committee apparatus and appointed head of the KGB on recommendation of Mikhail Suslov.

Crushing the Prague Spring

During the Prague Spring events in Czechoslovakia, Andropov was main proponent of "extreme measures". He ordered to fabricate false intelligence not only for public consumption, but also for the Soviet Politburo. "The KGB whipped up the fear that Czechoslovakia could fall victim to NATO aggression or to a coup" . At this moment, Soviet intelligence officer Oleg Kalugin reported from Washington that he gained access to "absolutely reliable documents proving that neither CIA nor any other agency was manipulating the Czechoslovak reform movement" . However his messages has been destroyed because it contradicted the conspiracy theory fabricated by Andropov . Andropov ordered a number of active measures, collectively known as operation PROGRESS, against Czechoslovak reformers.

Suppression of the Soviet dissident movement

Andropov was personally obsessed with "the destruction of dissent in all its forms" and always insisted that "the struggle for human rights was a part of a wide-ranging imperialist plot to undermine the foundation of the Soviet state" . In 1968 he issued a KGB Chairman's order "On the tasks of State security agencies in combating the ideological sabotage by the adversary", calling to struggle against dissidents and their imperialist masters. The brutal repression of dissidents included plans to maim the ballet staff defector Rudolf Nuriev.

In 1973, Andropov was promoted to full member of the Politburo. Andropov played the dominant role in the decision about soviet invasion into Afghanistan in 1979. He insisted on the invasion, although expected that the international community will blame the USSR this action ; the decision lead to the Soviet war in Afghanistan(1979 - 1988).

Andropov was the longest-serving KGB chairman and did not resign as head of the KGB until May 1982, when he was again promoted to the Secretariat to succeed Suslov as secretary responsible for ideological affairs. Two days after Brezhnev's death, on (November 12, 1982), Andropov was elected General Secretary of the CPSU being the first former head of the KGB to become General Secretary. His appointment was received in the West with apprehension, in view of his roles in the KGB and in Hungary.

Leader of the Soviet Union

During his rule, Andropov attempted to improve the economy by raising management effectiveness without changing the principles of socialist economy. In contrast to Brezhnev's policy of avoiding conflicts and dismissals, he began to fight violations of party, state and labour discipline, that led to significant personnel changes. During 15 months in office, Andropov dismissed 18 ministers, 37 first secretaries of obkoms, kraikoms and Central Committees of Communist Parties of Soviet Republics; criminal cases on highest party and state officials were started. For the first time, the facts about economic stagnation and obstacles to scientific progress were made available to the public and criticised.

In foreign policy, he achieved little—the war continued in Afghanistan. Andropov's rule was also marked by deterioration of relations with the United States. While he launched a series of proposals that included a reduction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe and a summit with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, these proposals fell on deaf ears in the Reagan and Thatcher administrations. Cold War tensions were exacerbated by the downing of a civilian jet liner, Korean Air Flight KAL-007, that had strayed over the Soviet Union on September 1, 1983 by Soviet fighters, and U.S. deployment of Pershing missiles in Western Europe in response to the Soviet SS-20 missiles. Andropov was requested by his Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov and by the head of the KGB Victor Chebrikov to keep from the World the knowledge that the Soviet Union held in its possessions the sought after "Black Box" from KAL 007 and that the Soviet Union engage in the deception that they too were looking for KAL 007 and the Black Box. Andropov, agreed to this and the ruse continued until Boris Yeltsin disclosed the secret in 1992 [2]. Soviet-U.S. arms control talks on intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe were suspended by the Soviet Union in November 1983. In August 1983 Andropov made a sensational announcement that the country was stopping all work on space-based weapons.

One of his most notable acts during his short time as leader of the Soviet Union was in response to a letter from an American child named Samantha Smith, inviting her to the Soviet Union. This resulted in Smith becoming a well-known peace activist.

When he could no longer work in the Kremlin or attend the Politburo meetings, since September 1983, he adopted an original way of governing: he would suggest ideas to his assistants and speech writers, who would then prepare analytical 'notes' for the Politburo.

On a Saturday preceding a Tuesday plenum of the Central Committee, Arkady Volsky, an aide to Andropov, came to Andropov's room at the Central Clinical Hospital in Kuntsevo to help him draft a speech. Andropov was in no shape to attend the plenum and he would have one of his men in the Politburo deliver the speech in his name. The last lines in the speech said that Central Committee staff members should be exemplary in their behavior, uncorrupted, responsible for the life of the country. Then Andropov gave Volsky a folder with the final draft and said, "The material looks good. Make sure you pay attention to the agenda I've written". Since the doctor walked him to the car, he didn't have time to look right away at what he had written Later, he got a chance to read it and saw that at the bottom of the last page Andropov had added in ink, in a somewhat unsteady handwriting, a new paragraph. It went like this: "Members of the Central Committee know that due to certain reasons, I am unable to come to the plenum. I can neither attend the meetings of the Politburo nor the secretariat. Therefore, I believe Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev should be assigned to preside over the meetings of the Politburo and the secretariat (of the Central Committee)." Andropov was recommending that Gorbachev be his inheritor. Volsky made a Xerox copy of the document and put the copy in his safe. He delivered the original to the Party leadership and assumed that it would be read out at the plenum. But at the meeting neither Chernenko, Grishin, Tikhonov, Ustinov nor any of the other politburo members made mention of Andropov's stated wishes. Volsky thought there must have been some mistake: "I went up to Chernenko and said, 'There was an addendum in the text.' He said, 'Think nothing of any addendum.' Then I saw his aide Bogolyubov and said, 'Klavdy Mikhailovich, there was a paragraph from Andropov's speech….' He led me off to the side, and said, 'Who do you think you are, a wise guy? Do you think your life ends with this?' I said, 'In that case, I'll have to phone Andropov.' And he replied, 'Then that will be your last phone call'". Andropov was furious when he heard what had happened at the plenum, but there was little he could do

In his memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev recalled that when Andropov was the leader, he and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the chairman of Gosplan, asked Yuri Andropov for access to real budget figures. "You are asking too much," Andropov responded. "The budget is off limits to you."

On December 31, 1983 Andropov celebrated the New Year for the last time. Vladimir Kryuchkov alongside with other friends visited Andropov. He was very thankful that his doctors let him drink a glass of champagne. They visited him for about an hour and a half. After they went and Andropov stayed alone with Kryuchkov, he said to him that he wished health and success to all the friends. At that moment, Kryuchkov understood that Andropov was going to die. On January, the future prime minister, Nikolai Ryzhkov visited Andropov. Andropov kissed him and told him to go.

Death and funeral

In February 1983, Andropov suffered total renal failure. In August 1983, he entered the Central Clinical Hospital in west Moscow on a permanent basis, where he would spend the remainder of his life. His aides would take turns visiting him in the hospital with important matters and paperwork.

Shortly before he was due to leave the Crimea, Andropov's health severely deteriorated. The lightly dressed Andropov had become tired, and had taken a breather on a granite bench in the shade; his body became thoroughly chilled, and he soon began shivering uncontrollably.

For the last two months of his life Andropov did not get out of bed, except when he was lifted onto a couch while his sheets were changed. He was physically finished but his mind was clear. Throughout his last days Andropov still worked even if it meant little more than signing papers or giving his assent to his aides' proposals.

In late January 1984 the gradual decline in his health that characterized his tenure suddenly intensified, and he deteriorated sharply due to growing intoxication in his blood, as a result of which he had periods of failing consciousness. He died on February 9 1984 at 16:50 in his hospital room. Few of the top people, not even all the Politburo members, learned of the fact on the same day. According to the Soviet medical report, Andropov suffered from several medical conditions: interstitial nephritis, nephrosclerosis, residual hypertension and diabetes, which were worsened by chronic kidney deficiency. He was succeeded in office by Konstantin Chernenko.

His state funeral was one of the biggest the world ever knew. A four-day period of nationwide mourning was announced. His body was lying in state in an open coffin in House of Trade Unions in Moscow. Inside the hall, mourners shuffled up a marble staircase beneath chandeliers draped in black gauze. On the stage at the left side of the hall, amid a veritable garden of flowers, a complete symphony orchestra in black tailcoats played classical music. Andropov's embalmed body, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black-and-red tie, laid in an open coffin banked with carnations, red roses and tulips, faced the long queue of mourners. At the right side of the hall, in the front row of seats reserved for the dead leader's family, his wife Tatyana Filipovna with her reddish- tinted hair held in place with a hairclip, sat alongside with her their two children, Igor and Irina.

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Andropov's coffin is pulled by BRDM-2 armoured vehicle in Red Square

On February 14, the funeral parade began. Two officers led the funeral parade, carrying a large portrait of him. A sea of red floral wreaths followed, adding a brilliant touch to a procession colored mostly in drab grays and black. Then officers in tall Astrakhan hats appeared, carrying the late leader's 21 decorations and medals on small red cushions. Behind them, the coffin rested atop a gun carriage drawn by an olive-green military scout vehicle. Walking immediately behind were the members of Andropov's family. The Politburo leaders, almost indistinguishable from one another in their fur hats and look-alike overcoats with red armbands, led the last group of official mourners. As the coffin reached to the middle of the Red Square it was taken out of the carriage it was placed on, and with its lid removed, it was placed on a red-draped bier facing the Lenin Mausoleum. At exactly 12:45 p.m. Tuesday, Andropov's coffin was lowered into the ground as foghorns blared, joining with sirens, wheezing factory whistles and rolling gunfire in a mournful cacophony.

His legacy

Andropov's legacy remains the subject of much debate in Russia and elsewhere, both among scholars and in the popular media. He remains the focus of television documentaries and popular non-fiction, particularly around important anniversaries. As KGB head, Andropov was ruthless against dissent, and author David Remnick, who covered the Soviet Union for the Washington Post in the 1980s, called Andropov "profoundly corrupt, a beast." Alexander Yakolev, later an advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, said "In a way I always thought Andropov was the most dangerous of all of them, simply because he was smarter than the rest."

According to his former subordinate Securitate general Ion Mihai Pacepa,

"In the West, if Andropov is remembered at all, it is for his brutal suppression of political dissidence at home and for his role in planning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. By contrast, the leaders of the former Warsaw Pact intelligence community, when I was one of them, looked up to Andropov as the man who substituted the KGB for the Communist party in governing the Soviet Union, and who was the godfather of Russia's new era of deception operations aimed at improving the badly damaged image of Soviet rulers in the West."

Despite Andropov's hard-line stance in Hungary and the numerous banishments and intrigues for which he was responsible during his long tenure as head of the KGB, he has become widely regarded by many commentators as a humane reformer, especially in comparison with the stagnation and corruption during the later years of his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev. Andropov, "a throwback to a tradition of Leninist asceticism," was appalled by the corruption during Brezhnev's regime, and ordered investigations and arrests of the most flagrant abusers. The investigations were so frightening that several members of Brezhnev's circle "shot, gassed or otherwise did away with themselves." He was certainly generally regarded as inclined to more gradual and constructive reform than was Gorbachev; most of the speculation centres around whether Andropov would have reformed the USSR in a manner which did not result in its eventual dissolution.

The Western media favored Andropov because of his supposed passion for western music and scotch.

Andropov's plaque on the FSB headquarters, Lubyanka Square, Moscow.

The short time he spent as leader, much of it in a state of extreme ill health, leaves debaters few concrete indications as to the nature of any hypothetical extended rule. As with the shortened rule of Lenin, speculators have much room to advocate their favourite theories and to develop the minor cult of personality which has formed around him.

Andropov lived in 26 Kutuzovski prospekt, on the same building of which Suslov and Brezhnev also lived in. He was first married to Nina Ivanovna. She bore him a son who died in mysterious circumstances in the late 1970's. In 1983 she was diagnosed with cancer and underwent a successful operation. His second wife, Tatyana Filipovna, he met during WW2 in the karelian front when she was Komsomol secretary. She had suffered a nervous breakdown during the Hungarian revolution. Andropov's chief guard informed Tatyana about the death of her husband. She was too grief-stricken to join in the procession and during the funeral her relatives helped her to walk. Before the lid could be closed on Andropov's coffin, she bent to kiss him. She touched his hair and then kissed him again. In 1985, a respectful 75-min. film was broadcasted in which Tatyana (not even seen in public until Andropov's funeral) reads love poems written by her husband. Tatyana was ill, and died in November 1991. Andropov had also a son, Igor (died in June 2006) and a daughter, Irina (born 1946).

Anecdotes

In the 1970s, H. Stuart Knight, head of the Secret Service, accompanied the President of the United States on a state visit to Moscow. One of the agents on Brezhnev's security detail was a rather attractive young lady, and Knight jokingly offered to trade one of his agents for her to Andropov, then head of the KGB. His reply, "One agent, and two Polaris missiles".

Pop culture references

• Yuri Andropov was lampooned twice in the 1980s comic strip Bloom County where he burst out of Binkley's anxiety closet; first as a communist cowboy and then later as the devil with a staff topped with the Hammer and sickle. On both occasions, Andropov was supposed to be Ronald Reagan's nightmare but wound up at Binkley's anxiety closet after taking a wrong turn due to his using Soviet made maps.

• Andropov was featured in the Tom Clancy book Red Rabbit as KGB chairman.

• Andropov was featured as a character (in his role as KGB Chairman) in the Craig Thomas book Firefox as well as the film adaptation. (In the latter, however, he is portrayed by a young-looking Wolf Kahler, even though Andropov himself was in his sixties when the novel was written and the film released.)

• Andropov was featured in the Ken Follet book Triple as KGB chairman.

Further reading

• Yuri Andropov: A Secret Passage into the Kremlin, Vladimir & Klepikova, Elena Solovyov, MacMillan Publishing Company, 1983, 302 pages, ISBN 0-02-612290-1
• The Andropov File: The Life and Ideas of Yuri V. Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Martin Ebon, McGraw-Hill Companies, 1983, 284 pages, ISBN 0-07-018861-0

External links

• List of Andropov documents related to Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents
• The KGB's 1967 Annual Report, signed by Andropov by CNN

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