Essay: Looking for Mr. Goodpov

Every time a new world leader rises from the smoke, the press and the public try to piece him together from known fragments, however tiny. This works the way police composite pictures are assembled: witnesses contribute nostrils, ear lobes, chins, until a fully shaded face emerges, looking more like a Can-you-draw-this? ad for a crooked art school than a bleeding, breathing person, but nonetheless the best one can do by so splintered a method. So it goes for Yuri Andropov, the Soviet Union's new leader. In past weeks, Western observers have labored mightily...

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