Andropov by Zhores A. Medvedev
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Changes in the leadership of the Soviet Union are so rare that they are treated like revolutions. Brezhnev was in office for eighteen years. [...] The change finally took place on 10 November 1982, after Brezhnev's death. [...] it had not been expected that the man elected to succeed as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union would be Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, the former head of KGB, a man who was certainly not Brezhnev's choice."

Readers below the age of 40 may not even remember the existence of the Soviet Union, for a long time the only other global superpower, equal in its political and military might to United States. I was born, raised, and spent my entire youth in Poland, which was a part of the Soviet block and almost completely dominated by Soviet ideology. I doubt that there existed many people among hundreds of millions living in the Soviet block who would imagine that the Soviet Union might one day disappear. Disappearance of sun or moon was way more likely. Even just a change at the very top of the Soviet leadership was indeed like a revolution. During all my years in Poland I lived through three such momentous events, but the change from Brezhnev to Andropov seemed to be the most important: Poland was at that time technically still under martial law after crushing the Solidarity movement and the main question for Poles was how the change of the Soviet General Secretary might affect the Polish fight for freedom.

Zhores A. Medvedev's book Andropov (1983) is a must read for anyone interested in the Communist ideology and the history of the second half of the 20th century. The author, a scientist and political activist who died last year, is the twin brother of perhaps the better-known Medvedev, Roy, a Russian historian. The author begins the Andropov's story with an account of the power struggle among the Soviet leadership when Brezhnev's health deteriorates and it becomes obvious that he will die soon.

Then the Andropov's biography proper begins and fast forwards through his first 40 years. In 1954 he becomes the Soviet ambassador to Hungary: the author focuses on Andropov's role in the bloody crushing of the Hungarian revolt of 1956. When he returns to Moscow he becomes a high-level functionary of the Communist Party's Central Committee and becomes a rather unwilling participant in the never-ending power struggle in the highest echelons of the party bureaucracy. In 1967 Andropov becomes the head of KGB in which position he stays for 15 years.

While an image of "liberal" and "sophisticated" Andropov is carefully cultivated, as the Chairman of KGB he is very effective and manages to largely eliminate political dissent through

"'moral and economic terror', a comprehensive system of depriving active dissidents of almost everything of value: education, employment, academic and research facilities, press or other media sources, income, and, if they still do not behave, freedom as well."

Then comes November of 1982, Brezhnev's death, and Andropov assumes the position of the General Secretary, which was much more powerful in the Communist world than that of the President of the US. We read about Andropov's foreign policy and the changes he attempts to make in domestic policies. We learn about his unsuccessful anticorruption campaign - the entrenched conservative bureaucracy from Brezhnev's times emerges victorious and succeeds in maintaining the status quo of ubiquitous corruption. Yuri Andropov dies after only 14 months in power and Konstantin Chernenko, a man in the Brezhnev's mold is elected to the top position.

There are clear signs of coming change, though: Mikhail Gorbachev emerges in 1983 and becomes the most influential figure in the Communist Party, despite Chernenko's top post. It is Gorbachev whose actions will in a few short years contribute in a major way to the event that had been impossible to ever imagine for hundreds of millions of people in the Soviet block - the fall of Communism. I am planning to review a book about the Gorbachev's revolution in two-three weeks.

Andropov is an interesting book but since it was written in 1983 - the death of Andropov is mentioned only in the Afterword - it lacks historical perspective. Had it been written in the later 1980s it would have likely been more insightful.

Three stars.

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