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When the coffin reached Red Square, it was placed, with its lid removed, on a red-draped bier facing the Lenin Mausoleum. Three battalions of cadets from the three services stood at attention. Remarked the TV announcer describing the scene to a nationwide audience: "The most important goal of the last decade of his life was detente. Of course, he was deeply disappointed by the sharp change of policy of the U.S." After speeches by Andropov, Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov, Academy of Sciences President Anatoli Alexandrov and a factory worker, pallbearers led by Andropov on the left and by Premier Nikolai Tikhonov on the right carried the coffin to another bier behind the mausoleum. There the family bade its last farewell to Brezhnev. His widow Victoria was overcome by emotion as she kissed her husband's face according to the Russian tradition. As an artillery salute boomed out and a military band played the national anthem, the coffin was lowered into its grave.
Most of the foreign dignitaries were intensely curious as they then waited for their first face-to-face meeting with Andropov at a reception in the Great Hall of St. George, the resplendent vaulted ceremonial room in the Grand Kremlin Palace. Few foreign leaders had ever seen much more of Andropov than his face in a line-up of Soviet leaders on a reviewing stand or a meticulously airbrushed photo that shaded out a decade or so of his 68 years. Unlike other Politburo members, Andropov had never traveled to the West, and during his 15-year tenure as head of the Committee for State Security (KGB) he had kept a conspicuously low profile.
As Andropov came in through a side door, accompanied by Tikhonov, Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Supreme Soviet Deputy Chairman Vasili Kuznetsov, the new Kremlin leader surprised everyone with his appearance. Pale and looking far older than in his official portraits, Andropov walked with a slow, distinctive gait. He put each leg forward cautiously, his head down as if he were studying the design on the red carpet laid in his path. One guest, a Briton, whispered, "Why, he can hardly see!" Indeed, as Andropov raised his head to face the waiting foreign envoys, his thick bifocal glasses betrayed a vision problem that seemed to explain the stooped, hesitant walk.
There was nothing hesitant, however, about the way he greeted the visitors, who included 32 heads of state, 15 Prime Ministers, 14 foreign ministers and four princes. Filing in first were the envoys from the Communist states of Eastern Europe. Andropov expressed no particular warmth toward General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's military ruler. Next came such allies as Cuban Party Chief Fidel Castro and Afghan President Babrak Karmal. They passed by briskly, exchanging only a few phrases with Andropov. But when Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua extended his hand toward Andropov's, the slow-moving queue of dignitaries came to a halt for three minutes while the two men talked volubly through an interpreter. The tall, stooped Soviet leader looked more than ever like a Russian zhuravl, or crane, as he bent forward to speak to the diminutive Chinese envoy. By contrast, Andropov's other greetings seemed lukewarm, even toward such friends of the Soviet Union as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Syrian President Hafez Assad.