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Two generals led the funeral parade, carrying a large portrait of Andropov. His full-cheeked, almost youthful face contrasted dramatically with the skeletal, almost alabaster profile that thousands had glimpsed while filing past his coffin. A sea of red floral wreaths followed, adding a brilliant touch to a procession colored mostly in drab grays and black. Then two officers in tall Astrakhan hats appeared, carrying the late leader's 21 medals, including Orders of Lenin and Orders of the Red Banner of Labor on red satin pillows. It was exactly half the number of medals that had accompanied Brezhnev to his grave.
Finally the coffin, draped in red and black cloth, came slowly into view, resting atop a gun carriage drawn by an olive-green military scout vehicle. Walking immediately behind were the members of Andropov's family: his son Igor and his daughter Irina, who was wearing a stylish red fox coat. Andropov's widow Tatyana, whose existence was not publicly known before Andropov's death, was too grief-stricken to join in the procession. The Politburo leaders, almost indistinguishable from one another in their fur hats and look-alike overcoats with red armbands, led the last group of official mourners.
In life, Andropov was a figure far removed from the world of average Soviets. The tears of distraught family members made him seem more human in death. Before the lid could be closed on Andropov's coffin, his wife bent to kiss his pale forehead. She tenderly caressed his sparse hair and then kissed him again. She had behaved at that moment of grief as any Russian woman would. For many Soviets witnessing the scene on their television screens, that moving glimpse of private pain seemed to cut through the hundreds of thousands of words that spewed forth in official obituaries and were scarcely different from those that had marked Brezhnev's passing.
At exactly 12:45 p.m. Tuesday, Andropov's coffin was lowered into the ground 50 feet from the Kremlin wall. From the Moscow River, foghorns blared, joining with sirens, wheezing factory whistles and rolling gunfire in a mournful cacophony. When the noisy tribute had ended, an eerie silence hung for five minutes over Red Square—and the nation. Then Chernenko and his eleven comrades on the Politburo regrouped on the mausoleum to review troops from the Moscow garrison, parading briskly past them to the strains of a stirring march. The Andropov era, brief as it was, had ended.
As the Chernenko regime began last week, workmen dismantled the enormous portraits of the late leader and took down the red and black bunting that had shrouded the Soviet capital during four days of mourning. The hammer-and-sickle flags above the Kremlin were raised again to full staff. Most dead Soviet leaders vanish quickly into history. It was not clear how much of Andropov's legacy would survive the transition. For the moment, the watchword appeared to be continuity. Said a senior British diplomat:
"Making haste slowly is likely to be the policy." After months of stasis and drift, the Soviet colossus may begin to move again. —By John Kohan. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof/Moscow, with other bureaus