(4 of 17)
Thus almost anywhere one might try to unravel the tangled events of 1983, the skein leads quickly to two figures: Reagan and Andropov. Fittingly so. As Chiefs of State of the prime nuclear powers, they symbolize some of the stark differences in U.S. and Soviet values and political systems that make the Washington-Moscow competition so intractable.
To say that they are a study in contrasts is to put it most mildly. The two leaders are of comparable age. Reagan will turn 73 in February; Andropov will be 70 in June. Apart from having their fingers on the nuclear button, they share one other similarity: Reagan has never been inside the Communist world and Andropov has never been outside it. Otherwise, they differ in almost every way.
Reagan is the Great Communicator, a genial performer before audiences of one sort or another since college days, master of the one-line quip, a man who entered politics in early middle age after winning fame in that all-American institution Hollywood. He rose to the presidency largely because he was able to articulate a personal ideological view on television more forcefully than anyone else. Andropov is the consummate Communist Party operative, a nearly faceless toiler in the political establishment of the U.S.S.R. all his adult life, head for 15 years of that quintessentially Soviet organization the KGB, a man who attained power by sophisticated backstage maneuvering in the ingrown, secretive Politburo.
In office, Reagan has become as vivid a figure to millions around the world as he has long been to U.S. citizens, dominating TV screens not only domestically but at times internationally. Andropov has become very nearly a ghost. He has been ill for much of his single year as Party Secretary and has been absent from public view since Aug. 18. He is suffering from a kidney ailment and is rumored variously to have diabetes and pneumonia. Though diplomats believe that Andropov has visited his office several times recently and is working daily at home or in a hospital bed, he has for months presented himself to the world only as a signature affixed to statements issued in his name.
There is a compelling reason for him to reappear at key meetings of the Party Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet this week: his continued absence would signal physical weakness that could have substantial political consequences, including Politburo discussions as to whether he is strong enough to stay on the job. On the other hand, if the truth is that Andropov is simply continuing to recover from a debilitating illness, his failure to appear would have far less meaning. Few things underline the difference between the U.S. and Soviet political systems so strikingly as the contrast between the regular, detailed medical bulletins the White House issued after Reagan was hit by a would-be assassin's bullet in March 1981 and the current statements by Kremlin officials to an unbelieving world that Andropov's ailment is nothing more than "a severe cold."