Yuri Andropov: 1914-1984
A former KGB chief, it was said, would never be allowed to rule the Soviet Union. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov confounded such predictions when he assumed control of the country's Communist Party in November 1982. Within seven months, Andropov had also secured the important title of Chairman of the Defense Council and been elected President of the Soviet Union. It had taken his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, 13 years to accumulate all the same trappings of power. The new Soviet leader, it seemed, was a man in a hurry.
Compared with the exuberant bear-hugging Brezhnev, Andropov appeared stern, almost ascetic in his thick glasses. He impressed Western visitors to the Kremlin with his command of facts, his sharpness of mind and his sardonic sense of humor. But somehow a sense of his true personality always seemed to elude them. The Soviet leader, French Foreign Minister Claude Cheysson remarked after a trip to Moscow in February 1983, was "extraordinarily devoid of the passion and human warmth" that he had encountered elsewhere in the country.
To the Soviet people, Andropov seemed a study in gray, as enigmatic as the fleeting smile he showed now and again in official photographs. Given Andropov's years at the helm of the Committee for State Security (in Russian, Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or KGB), some of his countrymen feared that he would turn out to be a reconstructed Stalinist, intent on imposing order on a society grown lax and corrupt in Brezhnev's final years. Others wishfully thought that he might emerge as a liberal, eager to improve relations with the West and reform the Soviet Union's cumbersome system of centralized planning. Andropov proved to be neither. Having taken hold of the reins of power late in life, he found his grip too feeble to alter the course of a nation of 271 million.
After Brezhnev's long, debilitating illness, many in the Soviet Union had hoped that his successor would be able to project a reassuring image of vigor and strength. But as early as Andropov's appearance at the state reception following Brezhnev's funeral, many foreign dignitaries were struck by the telltale signs of frailty and age that belied his reputation for mental agility. During the visit of Finnish President Mauno Koivisto in June 1983, Andropov had to be helped to his seat at a Kremlin banquet. When the Soviet leader met with West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl the following month, his eyes were clear and alert, but his right hand visibly shook.