Yuri Andropov

There has been much contention over Andropov's family background.[4] According to the official biography, Andropov was born in Stanitsa Nagutskaya (modern-day Stavropol Krai, Russia) on 15 June 1914.[5] His father, Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov, was a railway worker of Don Cossack descent who died of typhus in 1919. His mother, Yevgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein (none of the official sources mention her name), was a school teacher who died in 1931.[6][7] She was born in the Ryazan Governorate into a family of town dwellers and was abandoned on the doorstep of a Finnish citizen, a Jewish watchmaker, Karl Franzevich Fleckenstein, who lived in Moscow; he and his wife, Eudokia Mikhailovna Fleckenstein, adopted and raised her.[8][9]

Andropov's earliest documented name was Grigory Vladimirovich Andropov-Fyodorov; he changed it to Yuri Andropov several years later.[10] His original birth certificate disappeared, but it has been established that Andropov was born in Moscow, where his mother worked at a women's gymnasium from 1913 to 1917.[8][10]

On various occasions, Andropov gave different death dates for his mother: 1927, 1929, 1930 and 1931.[7][8] The story of her adoption was also likely a mystification. In 1937, Andropov was vetted when he applied for Communist Party membership, and it turned out that "the sister of his native maternal grandmother" (whom he called his aunt), who was living with him and who supported the legend of his Ryazan peasant origins, was in fact his nurse, who had been working for Fleckenstein long before Andropov was born.[7][8]

It was also reported that Andropov's mother belonged to merchantry. Karl Fleckenstein was a rich jewel merchant, owner of a jeweler's, as was his wife, who took over Karl's business after his accidental death in 1915 (he was mistaken for a German during the infamous anti-German pogrom in Moscow, although Andropov preferred to call it anti-Jewish).[10][11] The whole family could have been turned into lishentsy and stripped of basic rights had she not abandoned the store after another pogrom in 1917, invented a proletarian background, and left Moscow for the Stavropol Governorate along with Andropov's mother.[7][8]

Andropov gave different versions of his father's fate: in one, he divorced his mother soon after his birth; in another he died of illness.[10] The "father" in question, Vladimir Andropov, was in fact his stepfather, who lived and worked in Nagutskaya and died of typhus in 1919. The Fyodorov surname belonged to his second stepfather, Viktor Fyodorov, a machinist's assistant turned schoolteacher. Andropov's biological father is unknown; he probably died in 1916, a date in Andropov's 1932 résumé.[8][10] During the 1937 vetting, it was reported that his father served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army. Andropov joined the Communist Party in 1939.[7][8]

Komsomol membership card issued to Yuri Andropov in 1939.

Communist party Membership card issued to Yuri Andropov in 1955.

Communist Party Membership card issued to Yuri Andropov in 1973.

Member of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, 23 November 1982

Andropov was educated at the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical College and graduated in 1936.[5] As a teenager he worked as a loader, a telegraph clerk, and a sailor for the Volga steamship line.[9][6] At 16, then a member of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (YCL, or Komsomol), Andropov was a worker in the town of Mozdok in the North Ossetian ASSR.[5]

Andropov became full-time secretary of the YCL of the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical School and was soon promoted to organizer of the YCL Central Committee at the Volodarsky Shipyards in Rybinsk. In 1938, he was elected First Secretary of the Yaroslavl Regional Committee of the YCL, and was First Secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol in the Soviet Karelo-Finnish Republic from 1940 to 1944.[9]

According to his official biography, during World War II Andropov took part in partisan guerrilla activities in Finland; modern researchers have found no trace of his supposed squad.[10] From 1944 onward, he left Komsomol for Communist Party work. Between 1946 and 1951, he studied at the university of Petrozavodsk. In 1947, he was elected Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Karelo-Finnish SSR.[9][12]

In 1951, Andropov was transferred to the CPSU Central Committee. He was appointed an inspector and then the head of a subdepartment of the committee.[9]

In July 1954, Andropov was appointed Ambassador to Hungary. He held this position during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. Andropov played a key role in crushing the uprising. He convinced Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev that military intervention was necessary.[13] Andropov is known as "The Butcher of Budapest" for his ruthless suppression of the uprising.[14] Hungarian leaders were arrested and Imre Nagy and others executed.

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 [the Államvédelmi Hatóság (AVH)] 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".[13]

Andropov, Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev, 1967

In 1957, Andropov returned to Moscow from Budapest in order to head the Department for Liaison with Communist and Workers' Parties in Socialist Countries, a position he held until 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 Mikhail Suslov's recommendation, and promoted to candidate member of the Politburo. In 1970, out of concern that the burial place of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and their children would become a shrine to neo-Nazis, Andropov authorized an operation to destroy the remains that were buried in Magdeburg in 1946. The remains were thoroughly burned and crushed and the ashes thrown into the Biederitz River, a tributary of the nearby Elbe. No proof exists that the Russians ever found Adolf Hitler's body, but it is presumed that Hitler and Eva Braun were among the remains as 10 or 11 bodies were exhumed.[15][16] Andropov gained additional powers in 1973 when he was promoted to full member of the Politburo.

Role in the non-invasion of Poland

General Wojciech Jaruzelski meeting Andropov during the 1982 crisis

On 10 December 1981, in the face of Poland's Solidarity movement, Andropov, Soviet Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov, and Polish First Secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski[40] persuaded Brezhnev that it would be counterproductive for the Soviet Union to invade Poland by repeating the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring.[41] This effectively marked the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine.[42] The pacification of Poland was thus left to Jaruzelski, Kiszczak and their Polish forces.

Andropov (seated second from right in the front row) presides over the USSR's 60th Anniversary shortly after succeeding Brezhnev as its leader.

Two days after Brezhnev's death, on 12 November 1982, Andropov was elected general secretary of the CPSU, 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. At the time his personal background was a mystery in the West, with major newspapers printing detailed profiles of him that were inconsistent and in several cases fabricated.[43]

Andropov divided responsibilities in the Politburo with his chief deputy, Konstantin Chernenko. Andropov took control of organizing the work of the Politburo, supervising national defense, supervising the main issues of domestic and foreign policy and foreign trade, and making leadership assignments in the top ranks of the party and the government. Chernenko handled espionage, KGB, the Interior Ministry, party organs, ideology, organizational matters, propaganda, culture, science, and higher education. He was also given charge of the Central Committee. It was far too much for Chernenko to handle, and other Politburo members were not given major assignments.[44]

Foreign policy

Protest against the nuclear arms race between the U.S./NATO and the Soviet Union, The Hague, Netherlands, 1983

Andropov faced a series of foreign policy crises: the hopeless situation of the Soviet army in Afghanistan, threatened revolt in Poland, growing animosity with China, the polarization threat of war in the Middle East, and civil strife in Ethiopia and South Africa. The most critical threat was the "Second Cold War" U.S. President Ronald Reagan launched, and the specific attack on rolling back what he called the "Evil Empire". Reagan used American economic power and Soviet economic weakness to escalate massive spending on the Cold War, emphasizing technology that Moscow lacked.[53] The main response was to raise the Soviet military budget to 70% of the total budget and supply billions of dollars of military aid to Syria, Iraq, Libya, South Yemen, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Cuba, and North Korea. That included tanks and armored troop carriers, hundreds of fighter planes, anti-aircraft systems, artillery systems, and other high-tech equipment of which the USSR was its allies' main supplier. Andropov's main goal was to avoid an open war.[54][55][56]

In foreign policy, the conflict in Afghanistan continued even though Andropov, who now felt the invasion was a mistake, half-heartedly explored options for a negotiated withdrawal. Andropov's rule was also marked by deterioration of relations with the United States. During a much-publicized "walk in the woods" with Soviet dignitary Yuli Kvitsinsky, American diplomat Paul Nitze suggested a compromise for reducing nuclear missiles in Europe on both sides that the Politburo ignored.[57] Kvitsinsky later wrote that, despite his efforts, the Soviet leadership was not interested in compromise, instead calculating that peace movements in the West would force the Americans to capitulate.[58] On 8 March 1983, Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire". On 23 March, he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative. Reagan claimed this research program into ballistic missile defense was "consistent with our obligations under the ABM Treaty". Andropov dismissed this claim, saying, "It is time they [Washington] stopped ... search[ing] for the best ways of unleashing nuclear war. ... Engaging in this is not just irresponsible. It is insane".[59]

A photograph of Korean Air Lines HL7442, the airliner shot down by Soviet aircraft after drifting into prohibited airspace during the KAL 007 Flight.

In August 1983, Andropov made an announcement that the USSR would stop all work on space-based weapons. One of his most notable acts as leader of the Soviet Union was in response to a letter from a 10-year-old American child, Samantha Smith, inviting her to the Soviet Union. She came, but he was too ill to meet with her, thus revealing his grave condition to the world. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union suspended talks with the U.S. on intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe in November 1983, and by the end of the year the Soviets had broken off all arms control negotiations.[60]

Massive bad publicity worldwide came when Soviet fighters shot down a civilian jet liner, Korean Air Flight KAL-007, which carried 269 passengers and crew. It had strayed over the Soviet Union on 1 September 1983 on its scheduled route from Anchorage, Alaska, to Seoul, South Korea. Andropov kept secret that the Soviet Union held in its possession the black box from KAL 007 that proved the pilot had made a typographical error when entering data in the automatic pilot. The Soviet air defence system was unprepared to deal with a civilian airliner, and the shooting down was a matter of following orders without question.[61] Instead of admitting an accident, Soviet media proclaimed a brave decision to meet a Western provocation. Together with the low credibility created by the poor explanation of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, the episode demonstrated an inability to deal with public relations crises; the propaganda system was useful only for people and states aligned with the Soviet Union. Both crises were escalated by technological and organizational failures, compounded by human error.[62]

President Ronald Reagan at the Soviet Embassy signing condolence book on death of Andropov

In February 1983, Andropov suffered total kidney failure. In August 1983, he entered Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital; he spent the rest of his life there.

In late January 1984, Andropov's health deteriorated sharply and due to growing toxicity in his blood, he had periods of falling into unconsciousness. He died on 9 February 1984 at 16:50, aged 69.[63] Few of the top Soviet leaders learned of his death on that day. According to the Soviet post-mortem medical report, Andropov suffered from several medical conditions: interstitial nephritis, nephrosclerosis, residual hypertension and diabetes, worsened by chronic kidney deficiency.

Konstantin Chernenko, Yuri Andropov's successor as leader of The Soviet Union.

A four-day period of mourning across the USSR was announced. Syria[64] declared seven days of mourning; Cuba declared four days of mourning;[65] India declared three days of mourning;[65] Bulgaria,[66] North Korea[67] and Zimbabwe[68] declared two days of mourning; Czechoslovakia[69] and Costa Rica[70] declared one day of mourning. Andropov had a state funeral in Red Square, in a service attended by numerous foreign leaders, such as U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush,[71] British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher,[72] West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Italian President Sandro Pertini, East German First Secretary Erich Honecker, Polish First Secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, Cuban President Fidel Castro, and Irish President Patrick Hillery.[73] Eulogists were Chernenko, Ustinov, Gromyko, Georgi Markov[74] (head of the Union of Soviet Writers), and Ivan Senkin (First Secretary of the Karelian Regional Committee of the CPSU).[75] Andropov was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, in one of the 12 tombs between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall.[76]

Andropov was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko, who seemed to mirror Andropov's tenure. Chernenko had already been afflicted with severe health problems when he ascended to the USSR's top spot, and served even less time in office (13 months). Like Andropov, Chernenko spent much of his time hospitalized, and also died in office, in March 1985. Chernenko was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev, who implemented perestroika and glasnost policies to reform the Soviet Union politically and economically. On 26 December 1991, the USSR was dissolved.

Andropov's House

Andropov lived at 26 Kutuzovsky Prospekt, the same building in which Suslov and Brezhnev lived.[77]

Tatyana and Andropov had two children, Igor and Irina.[78] Igor joined the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as ambassador to Greece.[79]

Andropov's legacy remains the subject of much debate in Russia and elsewhere among scholars and in the popular media. He remains the focus of television documentaries and popular nonfiction, particularly at 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 him "profoundly corrupt, a beast".[80] Alexander Yakovlev, later an advisor to Gorbachev and the ideologist of perestroika, said: "In a way I always thought Andropov was the most dangerous of all of them, simply because he was smarter than the rest."[80] But Andropov himself recalled Yakovlev back to high office in Moscow in 1983 after a ten-year exile as ambassador to Canada after attacking Russian chauvinism. Yakovlev was also a close colleague of Andropov associate KGB General Yevgeny Primakov, later Prime Minister of Russia. Andropov began to follow a trend of replacing elderly officials with considerably younger ones.

Grave of Andropov at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis, Moscow.

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.[81]

Despite Andropov's hard-line stance in Hungary and the numerous banishments and intrigues for which he was responsible as head of the KGB, many commentators regard him as a reformer, especially in comparison with the stagnation and corruption of Brezhnev's later years. A "throwback to a tradition of Leninist asceticism",[80] Andropov was appalled by the corruption of 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."[80] He was generally regarded as inclined to more gradual and constructive reform than was Gorbachev; most of the speculation centers on whether Andropov would have reformed the USSR in a manner that did not result in its eventual dissolution.

The Western media generally favored Andropov,[82] but the short time he spent as leader, much of it in ill health, leaves debaters few concrete indications as to the nature of an extended rule. The 2002 Tom Clancy novel Red Rabbit focuses heavily on Andropov during his tenure of KGB chief, when his health was slightly better. It mirrors his secrecy in that British and American intelligence know little about him, not even able to confirm he was married. The novel also depicts Andropov as a fan of Marlboros and starka vodka, almost never available to ordinary Soviet citizens.

In a message read at the opening of a new exhibition dedicated to Andropov, Vladimir Putin called him "a man of talent with great abilities."[83] Putin has praised Andropov's "honesty and uprightness".[84] According to Russian historian Nikita Petrov, "He was a typical Soviet jailer who violated human rights. Andropov headed the organisation which persecuted the most remarkable people of our country."[85] According to Petrov, it was a shame for the USSR that a persecutor of intelligentsia and of freedom of thought became leader of the country.[86] According to Roy Medvedev, the year that Andropov spent in power was memorable for increasing repression against dissidents.[86] During most of his KGB career, Andropov crushed dissident movements, isolated people in psychiatric hospitals, imprisoned them, and deported them.[87] According to political scientist Georgy Arbatov, Andropov is responsible for many injustices in the 1970s and early 1980s: deportations, political arrests, persecuting dissidents, the abuse of psychiatry, and notorious cases such as the persecution of academician Andrei Sakharov.[88][89] According to Dmitri Volkogonov and Harold Shukman, Andropov approved the numerous trials of human rights activists such as Andrei Amalrik, Vladimir Bukovsky, Viacheslav Chornovil, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, Alexander Ginzburg, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Petro Grigorenko, and Anatoly Sharansky.[90]

According to Natalya Gorbanevskaya, after Andropov came to power the dissident movement went into decline, not on its own but because it was strangled.[91] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, repression was most severe; many people were arrested a second time and sentenced to longer terms. The camp regime was not strict but specific, and when Andropov became General Secretary, he introduced an Article under which violations of camp regime resulted in a punishment cell and an additional term up to three years. For two or three remarks a person could be sent to another camp with non-political criminals.[91] In those years, there were many deaths in camps from disease and lack of medical care.[91]

Various people who knew Andropov well, including Vladimir Medvedev, Aleksandr Chuchyalin, Vladimir Kryuchkov[92] and Roy Medvedev, remembered him for his politeness, calmness, unselfishness, patience, intelligence and exceptionally sharp memory.[93] According to Chuchyalin, while working at the Kremlin, Andropov would read about 600 pages a day and remember everything he read.[94] Andropov read English literature and could communicate in Finnish, English and German.[95]

Soviet Awards

	Hero of Socialist Labor (14 June 1974)[9]
	Order of Lenin, four times (23 July 1957, 13 June 1964, 2 December 1971, 1–4 June 1974)[9]
	Order of the October Revolution (14 June 1979)[9]
	Order of the Red Banner (14 July 1944)[9]
	Order of the Red Banner of Labour, thrice (23 September 1944, 24 July 1944, 15 February 1961)[9]
	Medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War", 1st class (1943)
	Medal "For the Victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945)
	Medal "For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1945)
	Medal "For Distinction in Guarding the State Border of the USSR"
	Jubilee Medal "Twenty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" (1965)
	Jubilee Medal "Thirty Years of Victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945" (1975)
	Jubilee Medal "In Commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin" (1969)
	Jubilee Medal "60 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR" (1978)
	Medal "In Commemoration of the 250th Anniversary of Leningrad" (1957)
	Medal "In Commemoration of the 1500th Anniversary of Kyiv" (1982)

• Honorary Member of the KGB, 1973

Foreign Awards

	Order of the Sun of Liberty (Afghanistan)
	Order of the Star (Afghanistan)
	Hero of the People's Republic of Bulgaria (Bulgaria)
	Order of the People's Republic of Bulgaria, 1st class (Bulgaria)
	Order of Georgi Dimitrov (Bulgaria)
	Medal "100 Years of Liberation from Ottoman Slavery" (Bulgaria)
	Order of the White Lion, 1st class (Czechoslovakia)
	Medal “For Strengthening Friendship in Arms”, Golden class (Czechoslovakia)
	Order of Karl Marx (East Germany)
	Order of the Flag of the Republic of Hungary, 1st class (Hungary)
	Order of Sukhbaatar (Mongolia)
	Order of the Red Banner (Mongolia)
	Jubilee Medal "50 Years Anniversary of the Mongolian Revolution" (Mongolia)
	Military Merit Cross of Colonel Francisco Bolognesi (Peru)

• Ленинизм озаряет наш путь [Leninism illumes our way] (in Russian). Moscow: Издательство политической литературы. 1964.
• Ленинизм – наука и искусство революционного творчества [Leninism is science and art of revolutionary creativity] (in Russian). Moscow: Издательство политической литературы. 1976.
• Коммунистическая убежденность – великая сила строителей нового мира [Communist firm belief is a great power of builders of new world] (in Russian). Moscow: Издательство политической литературы. 1977.
• "Доклад на торжественном заседании по случаю столетия со дня рождения Ф.Э. Дзержинского" [The report at the solemn meeting on the occasion of the centenary of F.E. Dzerzhinsky's birth]. Izvestiya (in Russian). 10 October 1977.
• Шестьдесят лет СССР: доклад на совместном торжественном заседании Центрального Комитета КПСС, Верховного Совета СССР и Верховного Совета РСФСР, в Кремлевском Дворце съездов, 21 декабря 1982 года [The sixty years of the USSR: a report of a joint solemn meeting of the CPSU Central Committee, the USSR Supreme Soviet and the RSFSR Supreme Soviet in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, 21 December 1982] (in Russian). Moscow: Издательство политической литературы. 1982.
• "Text of Andropov's speech at Brezhnev's funeral". The New York Times. 16 November 1982.
• Speeches and writings. Oxford; New York: Pergamon Press. 1983. ISBN 978-0080312873.
• Selected speeches and articles. Moscow: Progress Publishers. 1984. ASIN B003UHCKTO.
• Speeches, articles, interviews. A Selection. South Asia Books. 1984. ISBN 978-0836411652.
• Учение Карла Маркса и некоторые вопросы социалистического строительства в СССР [The teaching of Karl Marx and some issues of socialist building in the USSR] (in Russian). Moscow: Издательство политической литературы. 1983.
• Ленинизм – неисчерпаемый источник революционной энергии и творчества масс. Избранные речи и статьи [Leninism is an inexhaustible source of revolutionary energy and creativity of masses. Selected speeches and articles] (in Russian). Moscow: Издательство политической литературы. 1984.
• Andropov, Y.V. (1995). "The birth of samizdat". Index on Censorship. 24 (3): 62–63. doi:10.1080/03064229508535948. S2CID 146988437.
• Supreme Soviet - June 16, 1983.[96]
• Speech against the use of atomic Bombs - c. December 1982.[97]

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• Epstein, Edward (7 February 1983). "The Andropov hoax". The New Republic. Archived from the original on 25 February 2002.
• Epstein, Edward Jay (1996). Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer. New York: Random House. ISBN 978-0679448020.
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• List of Andropov documents related to Andrei Sakharov and other dissidents
• The KGB's 1967 Annual Report, signed by Andropov by CNN
• Похороны Андропова (Andropov's funeral, in Russian, 21 min) on YouTube