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Andropov was last seen in public on Aug. 18, when he met for almost two hours with a group of U.S. Senators. He looked pale but seemed attentive and sharp throughout the session. Andropov's health deteriorated following a vacation in the Crimea in September. The leadership took pains to minimize the importance of Andropov's disquieting disappearance from public view. Letters were issued over his signature, and statements were published in his name in the Soviet press. He remained conspicuously absent during the international crisis that erupted when a Soviet pilot shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing the 269 civilians aboard. Any lingering doubts that Andropov was seriously ill were dispelled when he failed to appear at Red Square on Nov. 7 for the military parade honoring the 66th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution. Even the ailing Brezhnev had managed to turn up for the 1982 ceremony, three days before his death. Andropov also missed the next key events on the Soviet political calendar: meetings of the Central Committee and the Supreme Soviet in December. During both sessions, his seat was vacant.
Andropov had encouraged expectations of change when, barely a month after he came to power, he delivered a brutally frank diagnosis of the nation's ailing economy. "You cannot get things moving by slogans alone," he told the party's Central Committee. "Shoddy work, inactivity and irresponsibility," he said, should have an influence on wages and rank. After the lassitude of Brezhnev's final years, Andropov initially projected the image of a cool, pragmatic leader intent on tackling the Soviet Union's major problems.
To match words with deeds, the former KGB chief launched a nation-wide campaign to tighten discipline and encourage efficiency and sobriety in the workplace. Police even raided stores, movie theaters and bathhouses in search of "shirkers" who should have been on the job. Andropov carried his campaign to the shop floor of Moscow's Ordzhonikidze machine-tool factory, assuring workers that he intended to get tough with everyone, "beginning with the ministers." He did. The official press carried stories of key bureaucrats who were summarily sacked and even executed after they were caught taking bribes.
The approach seemed to pay off. During the first three months of 1983, worker productivity climbed 3.9%, compared with 1.5% for the same period the previous year. Once the shock effect of the disciplinary measures had worn off, that performance could not be sustained. In a speech to the Central Committee that Andropov was too ill to deliver in person, the Soviet leader urged his compatriots "not to lose the tempo and the general positive intent to get things going." But Andropov proved unable to deal with the most intractable problem in the Soviet Union's sluggish economy: a cumbersome system of centralized planning that all but smothers creativity and initiative.