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86-615: Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (15 June [ O.S. 2 June] 1914   – 9 February 1984) was a Soviet politician who was the sixth leader of the Soviet Union and the fourth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , taking office in late 1982 and serving until his death in 1984. Earlier in his career, Andropov served as the Soviet ambassador to Hungary from 1954 to 1957. During this period, he took part in

172-575: A state funeral in Red Square , in a service attended by numerous foreign leaders, such as U.S. Vice President George H. W. Bush , British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher , West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl , Italian President Sandro Pertini , East German First Secretary Erich Honecker , Polish First Secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski , Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi , Cuban President Fidel Castro , and Irish President Patrick Hillery . Eulogists were Chernenko, Ustinov, Gromyko, Georgi Markov (head of

258-512: A campaign to eliminate all opposition in the USSR through a mixture of mass arrests, involuntary commitments to psychiatric hospitals, and pressure on rights activists to emigrate. These measures were meticulously documented throughout his time as KGB chairman by the underground Chronicle of Current Events , a samizdat publication that was itself finally forced out of existence after its 30 June 1982 issue. On 3 July 1967, Andropov proposed to establish

344-446: A civilian jet liner, Korean Air Flight KAL-007 , which carried 269 passengers and crew. It had strayed over the Soviet Union on 1 September 1983 on its scheduled route from Anchorage , Alaska , to Seoul , South Korea . Andropov kept secret that the Soviet Union held in its possession the black box from KAL 007 that proved the pilot had made a typographical error when entering data in the automatic pilot. The Soviet air defence system

430-762: A compromise for reducing nuclear missiles in Europe on both sides that the Politburo ignored. Kvitsinsky later wrote that, despite his efforts, the Soviet leadership was not interested in compromise, instead calculating that peace movements in the West would force the Americans to capitulate. On 8 March 1983, Reagan called the Soviet Union an " evil empire ". On 23 March, he announced the Strategic Defense Initiative . Reagan claimed this research program into ballistic missile defense

516-501: A family of town dwellers and was abandoned on the doorstep of Jewish watchmaker and Finnish citizen , Karl Franzevich Fleckenstein, who lived in Moscow. He and his wife, Eudokia Mikhailovna Fleckenstein, adopted and raised her. Andropov's earliest documented name was Grigory Vladimirovich Andropov-Fyodorov which he changed to Yuri Andropov several years later. His original birth certificate disappeared, but it has been established that Andropov

602-440: A key role in crushing the uprising. He convinced Soviet First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev that military intervention was necessary. Andropov is known as "The Butcher of Budapest" for his ruthless suppression of the uprising. Hungarian leaders were arrested and Imre Nagy and others executed. After these events, Andropov suffered from a "Hungarian complex", according to historian Christopher Andrew : "He had watched in horror from

688-506: A letter dated "12/22 Dec. 1635". In his biography of John Dee , The Queen's Conjurer , Benjamin Woolley surmises that because Dee fought unsuccessfully for England to embrace the 1583/84 date set for the change, "England remained outside the Gregorian system for a further 170 years, communications during that period customarily carrying two dates". In contrast, Thomas Jefferson , who lived while

774-461: A number of active measures , collectively known as operation PROGRESS, against Czechoslovak reformers during the Normalization period. Throughout his career, Andropov aimed to achieve "the destruction of dissent in all its forms" and insisted that "the struggle for human rights was a part of a wide-ranging imperialist plot to undermine the foundation of the Soviet state". To this end, he launched

860-708: A person could be sent to another camp with non-political criminals. In those years, there were many deaths in camps from disease and lack of medical care. Old Style and New Style dates Old Style ( O.S. ) and New Style ( N.S. ) indicate dating systems before and after a calendar change, respectively. Usually, they refer to the change from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar as enacted in various European countries between 1582 and 1923. In England , Wales , Ireland and Britain's American colonies , there were two calendar changes, both in 1752. The first adjusted

946-878: A start-of-year adjustment works well with little confusion for events before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Agincourt is well known to have been fought on 25 October 1415, which is Saint Crispin's Day . However, for the period between the first introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582 and its introduction in Britain on 14 September 1752, there can be considerable confusion between events in Continental Western Europe and in British domains. Events in Continental Western Europe are usually reported in English-language histories by using

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1032-402: A ten-year exile as ambassador to Canada after attacking Russian chauvinism. Yakovlev was also a close colleague of Andropov associate KGB General Yevgeny Primakov , later Prime Minister of Russia . Andropov began to follow a trend of replacing elderly officials with considerably younger ones. According to his former subordinate Securitate general Ion Mihai Pacepa : In the West, if Andropov

1118-526: Is 9 February 1649, the date by which his contemporaries in some parts of continental Europe would have recorded his execution. The O.S./N.S. designation is particularly relevant for dates which fall between the start of the "historical year" (1 January) and the legal start date, where different. This was 25 March in England, Wales, Ireland and the colonies until 1752, and until 1600 in Scotland. In Britain, 1 January

1204-554: Is remembered at all, it is for his brutal suppression of political dissidence at home and for his role in planning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia . By contrast, the leaders of the former Warsaw Pact intelligence community, when I was one of them, looked up to Andropov as the man who substituted the KGB for the Communist party in governing the Soviet Union, and who was the godfather of Russia's new era of deception operations aimed at improving

1290-597: Is responsible for many injustices in the 1970s and early 1980s: deportations, political arrests, persecuting dissidents, the abuse of psychiatry, and notorious cases such as the persecution of academician Andrei Sakharov . According to Dmitri Volkogonov and Harold Shukman , Andropov approved the numerous trials of human rights activists such as Andrei Amalrik , Vladimir Bukovsky , Viacheslav Chornovil , Zviad Gamsakhurdia , Alexander Ginzburg , Natalya Gorbanevskaya , Petro Grigorenko , and Anatoly Sharansky . According to Natalya Gorbanevskaya , after Andropov came to power

1376-639: The CPSU , the first former head of the KGB to become general secretary. His appointment was received in the West with apprehension in view of his roles in the KGB and in Hungary. At the time his personal background was a mystery in the West, with major newspapers printing detailed profiles of him that were inconsistent and in several cases fabricated. Andropov divided responsibilities in the Politburo with his chief deputy, Konstantin Chernenko . Andropov took control of organizing

1462-584: The Cold War , emphasizing technology that Moscow lacked. The main response was to raise the Soviet military budget to 70% of the total budget and supply billions of dollars of military aid to Syria , Iraq , Libya , South Yemen , the Palestine Liberation Organization , Cuba , and North Korea . That included tanks and armored troop carriers, hundreds of fighter planes, anti-aircraft systems, artillery systems, and other high-tech equipment of which

1548-772: The Communist Party in 1939. Andropov was educated at the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical College and graduated in 1936. As a teenager he worked as a loader, a telegraph clerk, and a sailor for the Volga steamship line. At 16, then a member of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (YCL, or Komsomol ), Andropov was a worker in the town of Mozdok in the North Ossetian ASSR . Andropov became full-time secretary of

1634-947: The Planned economy introduced under Joseph Stalin . In his memoirs, Gorbachev wrote that when Andropov was the leader, Gorbachev and Gosplan chairman Nikolai Ryzhkov asked him for access to real budget figures. "You are asking too much", Andropov responded. "The budget is off limits to you." In contrast to Brezhnev's policy of avoiding conflicts and dismissals, Andropov began to fight violations of party, state and labor discipline, which led to significant personnel changes during an anti-corruption campaign against many of Brezhnev's cronies. During his 15 months in office, Andropov dismissed 18 ministers and 37 first secretaries of obkoms , kraikoms and Central Committees of Communist Parties of Soviet Republics, and criminal cases against high-level party and state officials were started. Biographers including Solovyov and Klepikova and Zhores Medvedev have discussed

1720-539: The Russian Civil War , had become a site of pilgrimage for covert monarchists . With the Politburo's approval, the house, deemed to be not of "sufficient historical significance", was demolished in September 1977, less than a year before the murders' 60th anniversary. According to Yaakov Kedmi , Andropov was particularly keen to persecute any sign of Zionism in order to distance himself from his Jewish heritage. He

1806-592: The Russian Empire and the very beginning of Soviet Russia . For example, in the article "The October (November) Revolution", the Encyclopædia Britannica uses the format of "25 October (7 November, New Style)" to describe the date of the start of the revolution. The Latin equivalents, which are used in many languages, are, on the one hand, stili veteris (genitive) or stilo vetere (ablative), abbreviated st.v. , and meaning "(of/in) old style" ; and, on

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1892-574: The Solidarity movement and promoted reform-minded party cadres, including Mikhail Gorbachev . Andropov was the longest-serving KGB chairman and did not resign as head of the KGB until May 1982, when he was again promoted to the Secretariat to succeed Mikhail Suslov as secretary responsible for ideological affairs. Two days after Brezhnev's death , on 12 November 1982, Andropov was elected general secretary of

1978-757: The Union of Soviet Writers ), and Ivan Senkin (First Secretary of the Karelian Regional Committee of the CPSU). Andropov was buried in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis , in one of the 12 tombs between the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin wall . Andropov was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko , who seemed to mirror Andropov's tenure. Chernenko had already been afflicted with severe health problems when he ascended to

2064-458: The leader of the Soviet Union . Subsequently, he sought to eliminate corruption and inefficiency in the country by criminalizing truancy in the workplace and investigating longtime officials for violations of party discipline. Under Andropov's leadership, the Cold War intensified while the regime struggled to handle the growing crisis in the Soviet economy. His major long-term impact was bringing to

2150-542: The "KGB whipped up the fear that Czechoslovakia could fall victim to NATO aggression or to a coup". At this time, agent Oleg Kalugin reported from Washington that he had gained access to "absolutely reliable documents proving that neither the CIA nor any other agency was manipulating the Czechoslovak reform movement". His message was destroyed because it contradicted the conspiracy theory Andropov had fabricated. Andropov ordered

2236-511: The 19th century, a practice that the author Karen Bellenir considered to reveal a deep emotional resistance to calendar reform. Stavropol Governorate As of 1897, 873,301 people populated the oblast. Russians constituted the majority of the population. Significant minorities consisted of Ukrainians . Total Slavic population was 804,153 (92%) 45°03′00″N 41°59′00″E  /  45.0500°N 41.9833°E  / 45.0500; 41.9833 This Russian location article

2322-532: The 4th century , had drifted from reality . The Gregorian calendar reform also dealt with the accumulated difference between these figures, between the years 325 and 1582, by skipping 10 days to set the ecclesiastical date of the equinox to be 21 March, the median date of its occurrence at the time of the First Council of Nicea in 325. Countries that adopted the Gregorian calendar after 1699 needed to skip an additional day for each subsequent new century that

2408-579: The Boyne was commemorated with smaller parades on 1 July. However, both events were combined in the late 18th century, and continue to be celebrated as " The Twelfth ". Because of the differences, British writers and their correspondents often employed two dates, a practice called dual dating , more or less automatically. Letters concerning diplomacy and international trade thus sometimes bore both Julian and Gregorian dates to prevent confusion. For example, Sir William Boswell wrote to Sir John Coke from The Hague

2494-504: The British Isles and colonies converted to the Gregorian calendar, instructed that his tombstone bear his date of birth by using the Julian calendar (notated O.S. for Old Style) and his date of death by using the Gregorian calendar. At Jefferson's birth, the difference was eleven days between the Julian and Gregorian calendars and so his birthday of 2 April in the Julian calendar is 13 April in

2580-410: The British colonies, changed the start of the year from 25 March to 1 January, with effect from "the day after 31 December 1751". (Scotland had already made this aspect of the changes, on 1 January 1600.) The second (in effect ) adopted the Gregorian calendar in place of the Julian calendar. Thus "New Style" can refer to the start-of-year adjustment , to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar , or to

2666-587: The Central Committee. It was far too much for Chernenko to handle, and other Politburo members were not given major assignments. At home, Andropov attempted to improve the USSR's economy by increasing its workforce's efficiency. He cracked down on Soviet laborers' lack of discipline by decreeing the arrest of absentee employees and penalties for tardiness. For the first time, the facts about economic stagnation and obstacles to scientific progress were made available to

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2752-403: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union an elaborate plan to create a network of psychiatric hospitals to defend the "Soviet Government and socialist order" from dissidents. In January 1970, Andropov submitted an account to his fellow Politburo members of the widespread threat of the mentally ill to the regime's stability and security. His proposal to use psychiatry for struggle against dissidents

2838-612: The Gregorian calendar. For example, the Battle of Blenheim is always given as 13 August 1704. However, confusion occurs when an event involves both. For example, William III of England arrived at Brixham in England on 5 November (Julian calendar), after he had set sail from the Netherlands on 11 November (Gregorian calendar) 1688. The Battle of the Boyne in Ireland took place a few months later on 1 July 1690 (Julian calendar). That maps to 11 July (Gregorian calendar), conveniently close to

2924-466: The Gregorian calendar. Similarly, George Washington is now officially reported as having been born on 22 February 1732, rather than on 11 February 1731/32 (Julian calendar). The philosopher Jeremy Bentham , born on 4 February 1747/8 (Julian calendar), in later life celebrated his birthday on 15 February. There is some evidence that the calendar change was not easily accepted. Many British people continued to celebrate their holidays "Old Style" well into

3010-430: The Julian and Gregorian dating systems respectively. The need to correct the calendar arose from the realisation that the correct figure for the number of days in a year is not 365.25 (365 days 6 hours) as assumed by the Julian calendar but slightly less (c. 365.242 days). The Julian calendar therefore has too many leap years . The consequence was that the basis for the calculation of the date of Easter , as decided in

3096-564: The Julian calendar had added since then. When the British Empire did so in 1752, the gap had grown to eleven days; when Russia did so (as its civil calendar ) in 1918, thirteen days needed to be skipped. In the Kingdom of Great Britain and its possessions, the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750 introduced two concurrent changes to the calendar. The first, which applied to England, Wales, Ireland and

3182-510: The Julian date of the subsequent (and more decisive) Battle of Aughrim on 12 July 1691 (Julian). The latter battle was commemorated annually throughout the 18th century on 12 July, following the usual historical convention of commemorating events of that period within Great Britain and Ireland by mapping the Julian date directly onto the modern Gregorian calendar date (as happens, for example, with Guy Fawkes Night on 5 November). The Battle of

3268-405: The KGB's Fifth Directorate to deal with the political opposition (ideological coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence ). At the end of July, the directorate was established and entered in its files cases of all Soviet dissidents, including Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn . In 1968, as KGB chairman, Andropov issued the order "On the tasks of State security agencies in combating

3354-513: The Soviet Union to invade Poland by repeating the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia to suppress the Prague Spring . This effectively marked the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine . The pacification of Poland was thus left to Jaruzelski, Kiszczak and their Polish forces. From 1980 to 1982, while still chair of the KGB, Andropov opposed plans to occupy Poland after the emergence of

3440-607: The Soviet Union was in response to a letter from a 10-year-old American child, Samantha Smith , inviting her to the Soviet Union. She came, but he was too ill to meet with her, thus revealing his grave condition to the world. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union suspended talks with the U.S. on intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe in November 1983, and by the end of the year the Soviets had broken off all arms control negotiations. Massive bad publicity worldwide came when Soviet fighters shot down

3526-674: The Soviet army in Afghanistan , threatened revolt in Poland , growing animosity with China , the polarization threat of war in the Middle East , and civil strife in Ethiopia and South Africa . The most critical threat was the " Second Cold War " U.S. President Ronald Reagan launched, and the specific attack on rolling back what he called the " Evil Empire ". Reagan used American economic power and Soviet economic weakness to escalate massive spending on

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3612-517: The USSR in a manner that did not result in its eventual dissolution . The Western media generally favored Andropov, but the short time he spent as leader, much of it in ill health, leaves debaters few concrete indications as to the nature of an extended rule. The 2002 Tom Clancy novel Red Rabbit focuses heavily on Andropov during his tenure of KGB chief, when his health was slightly better. It mirrors his secrecy in that British and American intelligence know little about him, not even able to confirm he

3698-539: The USSR was its allies' main supplier. Andropov's main goal was to avoid an open war. In foreign policy, the conflict in Afghanistan continued even though Andropov, who now felt the invasion was a mistake, half-heartedly explored options for a negotiated withdrawal. Andropov's rule was also marked by deterioration of relations with the United States . During a much-publicized "walk in the woods" with Soviet dignitary Yuli Kvitsinsky, American diplomat Paul Nitze suggested

3784-471: The USSR's top spot, and served even less time in office (13 months). Like Andropov, Chernenko spent much of his time hospitalized, and also died in office, in March 1985. Chernenko was succeeded by Mikhail Gorbachev , who implemented perestroika and glasnost policies to reform the Soviet Union politically and economically. On 26 December 1991, the USSR was dissolved . Andropov lived at 26 Kutuzovsky Prospekt ,

3870-1161: The YCL of the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical School and was soon promoted to organizer of the YCL Central Committee at the Volodarsky Shipyards in Rybinsk. In 1938, he was elected First Secretary of the Yaroslavl Regional Committee of the YCL and was First Secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol in the Soviet Karelo-Finnish Republic from 1940 to 1944. According to his official biography, during World War II Andropov took part in partisan guerrilla activities in Finland although modern researchers have found no trace of his supposed squad. From 1944 onward, he left Komsomol for Communist Party work. Between 1946 and 1951, he studied at

3956-698: The ashes thrown into the Biederitz River , a tributary of the nearby Elbe . No proof exists that the Russians ever found Adolf Hitler 's body, but it is presumed that Hitler and Eva Braun were among the remains as 10 or 11 bodies were exhumed. Andropov gained additional powers in 1973 when he was promoted to full member of the Politburo . During the Prague Spring in 1968, Andropov was the main advocate of taking "extreme measures" against Czechoslovakia . According to classified information released by Vasili Mitrokhin ,

4042-471: The assassination of Nur Muhammad Taraki and Hafizullah Amin 's seizure of power. He became convinced that the CIA had recruited Amin to create a pro-Western expansionist " New Great Ottoman Empire " that would attempt to dominate Soviet Central Asia . Andropov's bottom line, "under no circumstances can we lose Afghanistan", led him and the Politburo to invade Afghanistan on 24 December 1979. The invasion led to

4128-455: The badly damaged image of Soviet rulers in the West. Despite Andropov's hard-line stance in Hungary and the numerous banishments and intrigues for which he was responsible as head of the KGB, many commentators regard him as a reformer, especially in comparison with the stagnation and corruption of Brezhnev's later years. A "throwback to a tradition of Leninist asceticism", Andropov was appalled by

4214-486: The combination of the two. It was through their use in the Calendar Act that the notations "Old Style" and "New Style" came into common usage. When recording British history, it is usual to quote the date as originally recorded at the time of the event, but with the year number adjusted to start on 1 January. The latter adjustment may be needed because the start of the civil calendar year had not always been 1 January and

4300-493: The complex possibilities underlying the motivations of anti-corruption campaigning in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and early 1980s: it is true that Andropov fought corruption for moral, ethical, ascetic, and ideological reasons, but it was also an effective way for party members from the police and security organizations to defeat competitors for power at the party's senior levels. Thus Andropov himself, as well as such protégés as Eduard Shevardnadze , could advance their power by

4386-410: The corruption of Brezhnev's regime, and ordered investigations and arrests of the most flagrant abusers. The investigations were so frightening that several members of Brezhnev's circle "shot, gassed or otherwise did away with themselves." He was generally regarded as inclined to more gradual and constructive reform than was Gorbachev; most of the speculation centers on whether Andropov would have reformed

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4472-471: The dissident movement went into decline, not on its own but because it was strangled. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, repression was most severe; many people were arrested a second time and sentenced to longer terms. The camp regime was not strict but specific, and when Andropov became General Secretary , he introduced an Article under which violations of camp regime resulted in a punishment cell and an additional term up to three years. For two or three remarks

4558-533: The end of the following December, 1661/62 , a form of dual dating to indicate that in the following twelve weeks or so, the year was 1661 Old Style but 1662 New Style. Some more modern sources, often more academic ones (e.g. the History of Parliament ) also use the 1661/62 style for the period between 1 January and 24 March for years before the introduction of the New Style calendar in England. The Gregorian calendar

4644-630: The extended Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989) and a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympic Games in Moscow by 66 countries, something of concern to Andropov since spring 1979. Some have proposed that the Soviet–Afghan War also played an important role in the Soviet Union's dissolution . On 10 December 1981, in the face of Poland's Solidarity movement , Andropov, Soviet Second Secretary Mikhail Suslov , and Polish First Secretary Wojciech Jaruzelski persuaded Brezhnev that it would be counterproductive for

4730-474: The fore a new generation of young reformers as energetic as himself, including Yegor Ligachyov , Nikolai Ryzhkov , and, most importantly, Mikhail Gorbachev . Upon suffering kidney failure in February 1983, Andropov's health began to deteriorate rapidly. He died aged 69 on 9 February 1984, having led the country for about 15 months. There has been much contention over Andropov's family background. According to

4816-508: The ideological sabotage by the adversary", calling for struggle against dissidents and their imperialist masters. After the assassination attempt against Brezhnev in January 1969, Andropov led the interrogation of the captured gunman, Viktor Ivanovich Ilyin . Ilyin was pronounced insane and sent to Kazan Psychiatric Hospital. On 29 April 1969, Andropov submitted to the Central Committee of

4902-628: The infamous anti-German pogrom in Moscow and killed, although Andropov characterized the pogrom as anti-Jewish . The whole family could have been turned into lishentsy and stripped of basic rights had she not abandoned the store after another pogrom in 1917, invented a proletarian background, and left Moscow for the Stavropol Governorate along with Andropov's mother. Andropov gave different versions of his father's fate: in one, he divorced his mother soon after his birth; in another he died of illness. The "father" in question, Vladimir Andropov,

4988-540: The official biography, Andropov was born in Stanitsa Nagutskaya (modern-day Stavropol Krai , Russia) on 15 June 1914. His father, Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov, was a railway worker of Don Cossack descent who died of typhus in 1919. His mother, Yevgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein (none of the official sources mention her name), was a school teacher who died in 1931. She was born in the Ryazan Governorate into

5074-552: The organisation which persecuted the most remarkable people of our country." According to Petrov, it was a shame for the USSR that a persecutor of intelligentsia and of freedom of thought became leader of the country. According to Roy Medvedev , the year that Andropov spent in power was memorable for increasing repression against dissidents. During most of his KGB career, Andropov crushed dissident movements, isolated people in psychiatric hospitals, imprisoned them, and deported them. According to political scientist Georgy Arbatov , Andropov

5160-452: The other, stili novi or stilo novo , abbreviated st.n. and meaning "(of/in) new style". The Latin abbreviations may be capitalised differently by different users, e.g., St.n. or St.N. for stili novi . There are equivalents for these terms in other languages as well, such as the German a.St. (" alter Stil " for O.S.). Usually, the mapping of New Style dates onto Old Style dates with

5246-416: The power to measure it and monitor its details. In such an environment, anti-corruption campaigning is a way for police and security people to appear to be cleaning up villains' malfeasance and coincidentally increasing their own power, when in fact one set of antiheroes may be defeating another set in a morally gray power struggle. Andropov faced a series of foreign policy crises: the hopeless situation of

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5332-565: The propaganda system was useful only for people and states aligned with the Soviet Union. Both crises were escalated by technological and organizational failures, compounded by human error. In February 1983, Andropov suffered total kidney failure . In August 1983, he entered Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital , where he would spend the rest of his life. In late January 1984, Andropov's health deteriorated rapidly. Due to growing toxicity in his blood , he had periods of falling into unconsciousness. He died on 9 February 1984 at 16:50, aged 69. Few of

5418-407: The public and open to criticism. Furthermore, Andropov gave select industries greater autonomy from state regulations and enabled factory managers to retain control over more of their profits. Such policies resulted in a 4% rise in industrial output and increased investment in new technologies such as robotics. Despite such reforms, Andropov refused to consider any changes that sought to dispense with

5504-556: The same building in which Suslov and Brezhnev lived. Tatyana and Andropov had two children, Igor and Irina. Igor joined the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs and served as ambassador to Greece. Andropov's legacy remains the subject of much debate in Russia and elsewhere among scholars and in the popular media. He remains the focus of television documentaries and popular nonfiction, particularly at important anniversaries. As KGB head, Andropov

5590-447: The same efforts that also promised to be better for the country in terms of justice, economic performance, and even defense readiness (which depended on economic performance). Part of the complexity is that in the Brezhnev era, corruption was pervasive and implicitly tolerated (though officially denied), and many a member of the police and security organizations participated in it to various degrees, but only those organizations had access to

5676-532: The start of a new year from 25 March ( Lady Day , the Feast of the Annunciation ) to 1 January, a change which Scotland had made in 1600. The second discarded the Julian calendar in favour of the Gregorian calendar, skipping 11 days in the month of September to do so. To accommodate the two calendar changes, writers used dual dating to identify a given day by giving its date according to both styles of dating. For countries such as Russia where no start-of-year adjustment took place, O.S. and N.S. simply indicate

5762-543: The suppression of the 1956 Hungarian Uprising . Later under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev , he was appointed chairman of the KGB on 10 May 1967. After Brezhnev suffered a stroke in 1975 that significantly impaired his ability to govern, Andropov began to increasingly dictate Soviet policymaking alongside Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko , Defense Minister Andrei Grechko and Grechko's successor, Marshal Dmitry Ustinov . Upon Brezhnev's death on 10 November 1982, Andropov succeeded him as General Secretary and, by extension, as

5848-616: The top Soviet leaders learned of his death on that day. According to the Soviet post-mortem medical report, Andropov suffered from several medical conditions: interstitial nephritis , nephrosclerosis , residual hypertension and diabetes , worsened by chronic kidney deficiency. A four-day period of mourning across the USSR was announced. Syria declared seven days of mourning; Cuba declared four days of mourning; India declared three days of mourning; Bulgaria , North Korea and Zimbabwe declared two days of mourning; Czechoslovakia and Costa Rica declared one day of mourning. Andropov had

5934-445: The university of Petrozavodsk. In 1947, he was elected Second Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Karelo-Finnish SSR . In 1951, Andropov was transferred to the CPSU Central Committee . He was appointed an inspector and then the head of a subdepartment of the committee. In July 1954, Andropov was appointed Ambassador to Hungary. He held this position during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution . Andropov played

6020-414: The windows of his embassy as officers of the hated Hungarian security service [the Államvédelmi Hatóság (AVH)] were strung up from lampposts. Andropov remained haunted for the rest of his life by the speed with which an apparently all-powerful Communist one-party state had begun to topple. When other Communist regimes later seemed at risk – in Prague in 1968 , in Kabul in 1979 , in Warsaw in 1981 , he

6106-403: The work of the Politburo, supervising national defense, supervising the main issues of domestic and foreign policy and foreign trade, and making leadership assignments in the top ranks of the party and the government. Chernenko handled espionage, KGB, the Interior Ministry, party organs, ideology, organizational matters, propaganda, culture, science, and higher education. He was also given charge of

6192-466: Was "consistent with our obligations under the ABM Treaty ". Andropov dismissed this claim, saying, "It is time they [Washington] stopped ... search[ing] for the best ways of unleashing nuclear war . ... Engaging in this is not just irresponsible. It is insane". In August 1983, Andropov made an announcement that the USSR would stop all work on space-based weapons . One of his most notable acts as leader of

6278-474: Was altered at different times in different countries. From 1155 to 1752, the civil or legal year in England began on 25 March ( Lady Day ); so for example, the execution of Charles I was recorded at the time in Parliament as happening on 30 January 164 8 (Old Style). In newer English-language texts, this date is usually shown as "30 January 164 9 " (New Style). The corresponding date in the Gregorian calendar

6364-565: Was behind the deaths of Fyodor Kulakov and Pyotr Masherov , the two youngest members of the Soviet leadership. A declassified document revealed that as KGB director, Andropov gave the order to prevent unauthorized gatherings mourning John Lennon . Beginning in January 1972, Andropov led the implementation of the Soviet détente strategy. In 1977, Andropov convinced Brezhnev that the Ipatiev House , where Tsar Nicholas II and his family were murdered by Bolshevik revolutionaries during

6450-430: Was born in Moscow, where his mother worked at a women's gymnasium from 1913 to 1917. On various occasions, Andropov gave different death dates for his mother: 1927, 1929, 1930 and 1931. The story of her adoption was also likely a mystification. In 1937, Andropov was vetted when he applied for Communist Party membership, and it turned out that "the sister of his native maternal grandmother" (whom he called his aunt), who

6536-587: Was celebrated as the New Year festival from as early as the 13th century, despite the recorded (civil) year not incrementing until 25 March, but the "year starting 25th March was called the Civil or Legal Year, although the phrase Old Style was more commonly used". To reduce misunderstandings about the date, it was normal even in semi-official documents such as parish registers to place a statutory new-year heading after 24 March (for example "1661") and another heading from

6622-785: Was convinced that, as in Budapest in 1956, only armed force could ensure their survival". In 1957, Andropov returned to Moscow from Budapest in order to head the Department for Liaison with Communist and Workers' Parties in Socialist Countries, a position he held until 1967. In 1961, he was elected full member of the CPSU Central Committee and was promoted to the Secretariat of the CPSU Central Committee in 1962. In 1967, he

6708-496: Was implemented in Russia on 14 February 1918 by dropping the Julian dates of 1–13 February 1918 , pursuant to a Sovnarkom decree signed 24 January 1918 (Julian) by Vladimir Lenin . The decree required that the Julian date was to be written in parentheses after the Gregorian date, until 1 July 1918. It is common in English-language publications to use the familiar Old Style or New Style terms to discuss events and personalities in other countries, especially with reference to

6794-523: Was implemented. As head of the KGB, Andropov was in charge of the widespread deployment of psychiatric repression. According to Yuri Felshtinsky and Boris Gulko , Andropov and the head of the Fifth Directorate, Filipp Bobkov , originated the idea to use psychiatry for punitive purposes. The repression of dissidents was a big part of Andropov's agenda and targeted such prominent figures as Andrei Sakharov and Roy Medvedev . Some believe that Andropov

6880-603: Was in fact his stepfather, who lived and worked in Nagutskaya and died of typhus in 1919. The Fyodorov surname belonged to his second stepfather, Viktor Fyodorov, a machinist's assistant turned schoolteacher. Andropov's biological father is unknown; he probably died in 1916, a date in Andropov's 1932 résumé. During the 1937 vetting, it was reported that his father served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army . Andropov joined

6966-409: Was living with him and who supported the legend of his Ryazan peasant origins, was in fact his nurse, who had been working for Fleckenstein long before Andropov was born. It was also reported that Andropov's mother came from a line of merchants . Karl Fleckenstein was the rich proprietor of a jewellery business which was run by his wife after his death in 1915 when he was mistaken for a German during

7052-465: Was married. The novel also depicts Andropov as a fan of Marlboros and starka vodka, almost never available to ordinary Soviet citizens. In a message read at the opening of a new exhibition dedicated to Andropov, Vladimir Putin called him "a man of talent with great abilities." Putin has praised Andropov's "honesty and uprightness". According to Russian historian Nikita Petrov , "He was a typical Soviet jailer who violated human rights. Andropov headed

7138-457: Was personally responsible for orchestrating the arrest and persecution of Soviet Jewish activist Natan Sharansky . In March 1979, Andropov and the Politburo initially opposed military intervention in Afghanistan. Among their concerns were that the international community would blame the USSR for its "aggression" and that the upcoming SALT II negotiation meeting with U.S. President Jimmy Carter would be derailed. Andropov changed his mind after

7224-515: Was relieved of his work in the Central Committee apparatus and appointed head of the KGB on Mikhail Suslov 's recommendation and promoted to candidate member of the Politburo. In 1970, out of concern that the burial place of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and their children would become a shrine to neo-Nazis , Andropov authorized an operation to destroy the remains that were buried in Magdeburg in 1946. The remains were thoroughly burned and crushed, and

7310-469: Was ruthless against dissent, and author David Remnick , who covered the Soviet Union for The Washington Post in the 1980s, called him "profoundly corrupt, a beast". Alexander Yakovlev , later an advisor to Gorbachev and the ideologist of perestroika , said: "In a way I always thought Andropov was the most dangerous of all of them, simply because he was smarter than the rest." But Andropov himself recalled Yakovlev back to high office in Moscow in 1983 after

7396-405: Was unprepared to deal with a civilian airliner, and the shooting down was a matter of following orders without question. Instead of admitting an accident, Soviet media proclaimed a brave decision to meet a Western provocation. Together with the low credibility created by the poor explanation of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster , the episode demonstrated an inability to deal with public relations crises;

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