Yuri Andropov
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| Yuri Andropov Ю́рий Влади́мирович Андро́пов |
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| In office November 12, 1982 – February 9, 1984 |
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| Preceded by | Leonid Brezhnev |
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| Succeeded by | Konstantin Chernenko |
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| Born | June 15, 1914 Stavropol, Russia |
| Died | February 9, 1984 Moscow, Russia |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
| Spouse | Tatyana Andropova |
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (Russian: Ю́рий Влади́мирович Андро́пов, Jurij Vladimirovič 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 sixteen months later.
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[edit] 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 CPSU in 1939 and was first secretary of the Komsomol in the Soviet Karelo-Finnish Republic from 1940 to 1944. During World War II, Andropov took part in partisan guerrilla activities. After the War, he moved to Moscow in 1951 and joined the party secretariat. In 1954, he became the Soviet Ambassador to Hungary. Andropov was one of those responsible for the Soviet decision to invade Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.
[edit] Rise to power
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 and subsequently brought into the Politburo as a candidate member. In 1973, Andropov was promoted to full member of the Politburo. He 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.
[edit] Andropov in office
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 lead 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.[1]
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 USSR 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. Soviet-U.S. arms control talks on intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe were suspended by the Soviet Union in November 1983.
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.
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[edit] Andropov's legacy
Andropov died of kidney failure on February 9, 1984, after several months of failing health, and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko. He was honoured by a state funeral and was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis. His wife, Tatyana (died 1991), was too grief-stricken to join in the procession. Before the lid could be closed on Andropov's coffin, she bent to kiss him. She touched his hair and then kissed him again. He had also a son, Igor (died in June 2006) and two daughters, Irina and Tatyana.
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."[2] 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."[3]
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,"[4] 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."[5] 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 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.[6]
[edit] 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".
[edit] Controversy
Since the time he was elected General Secretary of the CPSU, there has been speculation and controversy about his past. Declassified 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 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.
[edit] References
- ^ Great Russian Encyclopedia (2005), Moscow: Bol'shaya Rossiyskaya Enciklopediya Publisher, vol. 1, p. 742
- ^ Remnick, David, Lenin's Tomb:The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. New York; Random House, 1993, p. 191
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ Ibid.
- ^ Ilya Milstein (2006). Yury Andropov. A poet of the era of dinosaurs. New Times. Retrieved on September 26, 2006.
[edit] 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
| Preceded by Leonid Brezhnev |
General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party 1982–1984 |
Succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko |
| Preceded by Vladimir Semichastny |
Chairman of KGB 1967–1982 |
Succeeded by Vitaly Vasilyevich Fyodorchuk |
| Historical Russian Leadership |
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