Andropov's policy, its pros and cons. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov: death, dates of life, historical facts

Now the version is quite widespread that Andropov, the only leader of the USSR, was a Jew. Indeed, the KGB chief and secretary general introduced a lot of confusion and fog into his biography, but did he hide his nationality or something else? To answer this question, we offer you the article "The fifth point of Yuri Andropov" from the book by Alexander Sever "10 myths about the KGB".

Alexander Sever. The fifth point of Yuri Andropov

Many domestic authors were interested in Yuri Andropov in his ... nationality. The fact is that in most of the official biographies this "important" point was absent. We will not once again cite all the "evidence" that Yuri Andropov is a purebred Jew, but will present the results of the "research" of journalist Mark Steinberg.
According to the data of this person, Yuri Andropov's father was named Velv (Vladimir) Lieberman, and he was a Polish Jew by nationality, and his mother was Genya (Eugenia) Feinstein. My father worked as a telegraph operator at the Nagutskaya station and died of typhus in 1919. The widow moved with her six-year-old son to Mozdok and soon married the Greek Andropulo, who adopted Yuri. The stepfather soon died, leaving his last name (converted into Russian - Andropov) and his daughter Valentina a "legacy".

Yuri Andropov’s half-sister is not mentioned in any biography, except for Yuri Tyoshkin’s book "Andropov and Others". This book has interesting photo depicting young Yuri Andropov with his sister Valentina and grandmother. The woman in the picture is another mystery. Although it can be assumed that this is not a relative, but a nanny.
The original source of the "Semitic" version of the origin of Yuri Andropov, the former first secretary of the Krasnodar regional committee of the CPSU, Sergei Medunov, said in an interview that his father had worked with Yuri Andropov's parent at the railway station even before the revolution. And the name of a colleague was Vladimir Lieberman. After 1917, for some reason, he changed his surname to Andropov.

The culprit of the investigation, being already the chief of the KGB, once bitterly said in a conversation with Academician Yevgeny Chazov, head of the Fourth Directorate of the USSR Ministry of Health:
“Recently my people went to see one person in Rostov who traveled around North Caucasus- the places where I was born and where my parents lived, and collected information about them. My mother, an orphan, was taken to his home by a rich Jew as a baby. They even wanted to play on this that I hide my true origin. "

In fact, Yuri Andropov had something to hide. Yuri Andropov reluctantly recalled his childhood and youth in his mature years. Indeed, in numerous questionnaires and autobiographies, he indicated falsified data about his parents, as well as the place and, possibly, even the date of his birth. The fact is that his closest assistant and future chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, claims that Yuri Andropov was born not in 1914, as it is written in all encyclopedias, but a year later.

The "official" autobiography of Yuri Andropov reads as follows:
“The father was from the Don Cossacks, a railway employee, the mother was from the bourgeoisie. My mother died in 1919 when I was five years old, my father in 1929. My mother did not remember my parents, she was in infancy was thrown into the family of the merchant Fleckenstein and was brought up in it until the age of sixteen. She married early and divorced my husband shortly after my birth. Her second husband, my stepfather, is Viktor Alekseevich Fedorov. I was brought up in his family until I graduated from the railway school in 1930, before the beginning of an independent life. "
Numerous biographers of the KGB chairman refer to this document when they create a positive or negative image of this legendary personality... The word "legendary" was used deliberately - since the thirties of the last century, the life of Yuri Andropov is shrouded in many myths. And he himself was the initiator of their creation.

“The most mysterious fellow countryman” - that's how Yuri Andropov is called by those who now live in his small “homeland”. Most attempts to recreate a picture of him early years life ended in failure. At first, Yuri Andropov himself prevented this - after all, he had something to hide. And after his death, all attempts of Stavropol ethnographers to find relatives of the famous countryman and old residents ended in failure. When in the summer of 2004 they celebrated the 90th birthday of the "secretary general from the Lubyanka", they talked about his childhood very laconically.

Few people know that until 1931 Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was called Grigory Vladimirovich Andropov-Fedorov. When he became Yuri and lost half of his surname is unknown. He also had a biological father (his name is unknown) and two stepfathers. Like a professional revolutionary or intelligence agent, he rewrote his biography several times, successfully deceiving his native state.

Yuri Andropov was born, according to the "official" version, on June 15, 1914 at the railway station ( Cossack village) Nagutskaya, Stavropol Territory (now the village of Soluno-Dmitrievskoe of the Andropovsky (former Kursavsky) region) in the family ... but here the discrepancies begin: according to official data - a railway telegraph operator, according to the stories of his nanny - a communication engineer. In one of his own biographies, Yuri Andropov pointed out:
“... worked at the Nagutskaya station as a station attendant. In 1915 he was transferred to the Beslan Sev station. Kavk. yellow dor. traffic controller ".
Also, the future chairman of the KGB reported a spicy fact from the biography of his first stepfather - he was expelled from the institute of communications for ... drunkenness. We would not make a sensation out of this. Maybe Andropov graduated safely educational institution and became a certified specialist. And his son kicked him out of the university when it was required to have an impeccable biography and worker-peasant origin. After the October Revolution in the USSR, it was safer to have a poorly educated telegraph operator as a parent than a graduate engineer from the "former".

The first stepfather Yuri Andropov had relatives among the Cossacks, but he himself did not belong to this military-agricultural class that guarded the southern borders Russian Empire... It is possible that he was born in another place, and came to work in the village as a specialist. This hypothesis is confirmed by his civilian specialty, far from Agriculture and military affairs. But according to another version, based on the self-written autobiography of the future head of the KGB, his first stepfather is a hereditary Don Cossack.

Vladimir Andropov died of typhus when his son was, according to one version, four years old, and according to another, five years old. In order not to injure the child, the family decided to hide this death from him. Yuri Andropov himself, in one questionnaire (filled out during admission to the Rybinsk River College on March 22, 1932) indicated the date of death of the first stepfather: 1916, and in another questionnaire (written in August 1937) - 1919.

No less tragic and mysterious is the fate of Yuri Andropov's mother. She died, according to some sources, in 1927 from an unknown illness, and according to others, she was still alive in 1931. There are at least two photographs confirming the second version. Both are made in the city of Mozdok. On the first (1929) she was captured with the graduates of the factory seven-year plan, together with her daughter Valentina - the sister of Yuri Andropov. And the second, dated 1931, is a beautifully executed photograph of her. Both pictures were published in Yuri Tyoshkin's book Andropov and Others.

Yuri Andropov himself introduced even more confusion on this issue. In 1939, he indicated in one of the questionnaires:
"Mother died in 1931." And a couple of years before that, another date appears: 1930. You can also find a third date: 1929.
About the origin of Yuri Andropov's mother, Evgenia Flekenstein, journalist Oksana Khimich was also told by her great-grandson.

“She, very tiny, was thrown to the door of the house of a wealthy merchant Karl Feinstein (right - Fleckenstein. - Approx. ed.). In the wicker basket the baby was in, there was no name note or information about the parents. Therefore, when the merchant decided to adopt the girl, he gave her his last name. This is how the metric with the record appeared: Evgenia Karlovna Feinstein. The adoptive parents raised Zhenya as their own daughter. They gave me a decent education (she became a music teacher) and found a suitable spouse. "

A family legend again. Yuri Andropov himself, in his numerous biographies written with his own hand, outlined several versions of the life of his mother and grandmother. So, in 1937 he writes: "Mother comes from Moscow (family of a craftsman)."
And in less than two years a new version which matches the family legend:
“The mother was born into the family of a washerwoman (or a maid) ... She was taken into foster care in the Fleckenstein family. Fleckenstein himself was a watchmaker. According to the documents, he is listed as a merchant.
He died in 1915. His wife now lives in Moscow. Pensioner ".
In 1937, during a conversation with the instructor of the Central Committee of the Komsomol Kapustina (a Komsomol official was finding out the details of the biography of the secretary of the Yaroslavl regional committee of the Komsomol) Yuri Andropov said:
“Father is a railway employee ... Mother comes from a family of burghers of the Ryazan province. She was thrown into a family of watchmakers by a Finnish citizen Fleckenstein, who lived in Moscow, where she was brought up. From the age of 17 she worked as a teacher. "

The merchant's widow Evdokia Mikhailovna Flekenstein did indeed live in Moscow. Her late husband's name was Karl Frantsevich, and he traded in watches and jewelry... The family business for the spouses - immigrants from Finland - was successful. They owned a four-story mansion on Bolshaya Lubyanka Street (house 26). This building has survived to this day. Yuri Andropov was born in this house. Moreover, the Fleckenstein store was twice attacked by pogromists. True, not anti-Jewish, as some thought, but anti-German. There was such a "hobby" among Russian patriots during the First World War - to smash the German embassy, ​​shops where German surnames were on the signs, and so on.

Yuri Andropov's mother, Evgenia Flekenstein, began teaching at the Moscow women's gymnasium in Minsbach in 1913. She did this until February 1917, and then left for the province with her son. There she changed her biography and remarried. It is highly probable that the biological father of Yuri Andropov was not the railway worker Vladimir Andropov, but another person. He could leave the family, die in 1916 (remember the entry in one of his son's autobiographies) or die in Civil war like a White Guard officer. In 1937, rumors circulated that Yuri Andropov's father was a tsarist officer.
In 1921, Evgenia Flekenstein married for the third time to the assistant to the engine driver Viktor Aleksandrovich Fedorov. After her death, the second stepfather of Yuri Andropov married again. In 1922 (according to other sources, in 1924), they moved to Mozdok ( North Ossetia), where Yuri graduated from a seven-year railway factory school, his second stepfather taught plumbing there, and his mother taught children music, drawing and German... Now it is school number 108.

From August to December 1930, Yuri Andropov worked first as a telegraph worker, and from December 1930 to April 1932 as an apprentice and assistant projectionist of the Railway Workers' Club. Then he joined the Komsomol.
It is clear that in the presence of such a specific biography, it was easier for Yuri Andropov to demonstrate to those around him his attempts to hide his “Jewish” origin than his “former” parents.

Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich (06/15/1914 - 02/09/1984) - Soviet political, as well statesman, who was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU (1982 - 1984), Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (1983 - 1984), Chairman of the KGB of the USSR (1967 - 1982).

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was born on June 15, 1914. in the Stavropol Territory at the Nagutskaya station. His father was a railroad worker, but died of typhus when Yura was only five. Yuri Andropov's mother, who worked as a music teacher, also passed away early, so the boy was brought up in the family of his stepfather.

In the city of Mozdok, Yuri Andropov studied from 1923 to 1931 at a seven-year railway factory school, and he began working at the age of sixteen, having got a job as a loader. In 1931 he worked as an assistant projectionist, then worked as a telegraph worker. From the age of eighteen, Yuri Andropov worked on various ships of the Volga Shipping Company.

In 1936. Andropov graduated from the Rybinsk technical school of water transport. During this period, he began to engage in Komsomol work, and was elected secretary of the Komsomol organization of the technical school, as well as the Komsomol organizer of the Rybinsk shipyard.

In 1937, Andropov was elected secretary, and a year later - first secretary of the regional committee of the Komsomol of Yaroslavl. He joined the CPSU (b) / CPSU in 1939.

In 1940, Yuri Andropov was sent to work in Karelia. In Petrozavodsk, Yuri Vladimirovich met Tatyana Filippovna Lebedeva, married her, and in August 1941, a son was born to Yuri Andropov.

During the war, he took an active part in organizing the partisan movement there, continuing to lead the Komsomol organization in the part of the republic unoccupied by the Nazis.

When in 1944 Karelia was liberated from the Nazis, Andropov switched to party work. Since 1947 was the 2nd secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Karelia.

After the war, he studied in absentia at the Karelo-Finnish University, at the Faculty of History and Philology, also graduated from the Higher Party School.

Since 1953 Andropov worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1954-1957 he was the USSR ambassador to Hungary, took an active part in suppressing the uprising directed against the communist regime in this state.

In 1967 he became chairman of the KGB and was elected a candidate member of the Politburo. Special attention Yuri Andropov devoted to monitoring the work of the state security bodies socialist countries, resolutely opposing those states of the socialist camp that wished to pursue foreign and domestic policies independent of the Soviet Union.

In 1974 Andropov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

In 1982 Andropov left the leadership of the KGB and was elected secretary of the Central Committee. After Brezhnev's death at the end of 1982. Yuri Andropov was elected General. Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, and a year later he also became the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.

At the end of 1983, Yuri Andropov's health deteriorated sharply.

02/09/1984 Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov died.

The main achievements of Andropov

• Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov held the post of General. Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee only a year and a half. Having come to power, he made an attempt to overcome the socio-economic crisis by introducing strict discipline, both in the workplace and among the workers of the party apparatus. The period of Andropov's rule among the general population is associated with a serious tightening of discipline in the workplace, as well as with massive document checks carried out in stores, on the streets, and also in cinemas. The purpose of such checks was to identify persons who are in work time outside their jobs. At the same time, Andropov actively fought against the numerous privileges of people who worked in the state and party apparatus, while he himself renounced a significant part of these privileges, set an example for the rest. Andropov's policy aroused support from those people who felt nostalgia for a "firm hand" after the Brezhnev era.
• At the same time, Andropov was not a reformer in the full sense of the word. Realizing that ossified soviet system needs significant improvement, he was going to do this without destroying the state, as well as his centralized policy. Andropov tried to eliminate the mistakes of the Brezhnev era, putting things in order in management, eliminating embezzlement, protectionism and corruption and tightening the screws in the country. However, since the economic as well political system in the state remained unchanged, the measures taken led, in fact, only to toughening ideological control, as well as repressions against dissidents. In addition, the reforms begun by Andropov were not continued by the next Soviet leader, since his successor was Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko, a representative of the conservative wing of the communists.

Important dates in the biography of Andropov

• 06/15/1914 - was born in the Stavropol Territory in the family of a railway worker.
• 1923-1931 - studies at a seven-year railway factory school.
• 1931 - worked as an assistant projectionist, then as a telegraph worker.
• 1932 - the beginning of work as a sailor on various ships of the Volga Shipping Company.
• 1936 - graduated from the Rybinsk technical school of water transport. The beginning of the Komsomol work, the election of the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the technical school, the Komsomol organizer of the Rybinsk shipyard.
• 1939 - becomes a member of the CPSU (b) / KPSS.
• 1940 - sent to work in Karelia.
• 1941 - Marriage to Tatyana Filippovna Lebedeva, birth of a son.
• 1941-1944 - participation in the organization of the partisan movement in Karelia.
• 1944 - transition to party work.
• 1947 - Appointment as the 2nd secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Karelia.
• 1953 - Began to work at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
• 1954-1957 - worked as the USSR ambassador to Hungary.
• 1967 - Appointed chairman of the KGB, elected as a candidate member of the Politburo.
• 1974 - awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
• 1982 - Elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
• 1983 - Elected Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
• 02/09/1984 - Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov died.

• Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov himself claimed that he was born a year later than the date indicated in his passport, and he attributed an extra year to himself for admission to study at a technical school.
• Under Andropov, the USSR began to produce massively licensed gramophone records of Western popular performers of those musical genres (synth-pop, disco, rock) that were previously considered ideologically unacceptable. This was done in order to combat speculation in gramophone records, as well as magnetic recordings. Andropov himself appreciated the work of Vladimir Vysotsky and loved his songs.
• The measures taken to tighten labor discipline under Andropov sometimes seemed too harsh to the population. For example, in Leningrad, in large department stores, cinemas, as well as in other places with a high concentration of people, police raids were carried out, during which the documents of the people present were totally checked in order to identify absentees at work. Moreover, these checks were sometimes carried out so thoroughly and harshly that even schoolchildren who had escaped from their lessons to the cinema were sometimes included in the lists of truants. A few days later, school principals received official letters from law enforcement agencies, in which the names of the caught truants were indicated.

Predecessor:	Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev
Successor:	Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko
8th Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR June 16, 1983 - February 9, 1984
Predecessor:
Successor:	Vasily Vasilievich Kuznetsov (acting)
Predecessor:	Vladimir Efimovich Semichastny
Successor:	Vitaly Fedorchuk
	VKP (b) - KPSS
Birth:
Buried:	Necropolis at the Kremlin wall
Birth name:	Georgy Andropov
	Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov
	Evgeniya Karlovna Fleckenstein
	1) Nina Ivanovna Engalycheva 2) Tatiana Filippovna Lebedeva
	From 1st marriage son: Vladimir daughter: Eugene From 2nd marriage son: Igor daughter: Irina
Military service
	Army General
Autograph:

Education

Biography

In the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Ambassador to Hungary

Film incarnations

(genus. June 2 (15), 1914, Nagutskaya station (now the village of Soluno-Dmitrievskoe of the Andropovsky (former Kursavsky) region) - February 9, 1984) - Soviet statesman and politician, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee (1982-1984), Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR (1983-1984), Chairman of the KGB of the USSR (1967-1982).

Origin

Information about Andropov's origin is very confusing and contradictory.

Father Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov - railway employee, graduated or studied at the Moscow Institute railway transport... He worked as a telegraph operator at the Nagutskaya station. He died of typhus in 1919.

Andropov's mother, music teacher Evgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein, was the adopted daughter of the natives of Finland - the watch and jewelry merchant Karl Frantsevich Fleckenstein and Evdokia Mikhailovna Fleckenstein, who, after the death of Karl Fleckenstein in 1915, was engaged in her husband's affairs. She divorced Andropov's father shortly after the birth of her son. She married for the second time in 1921. She died in 1927.

Education

Mozdok seven-year railway factory school (studied in 1923-1931, completed the full course). Rybinsk River College (now Rybinsk River School, studied in 1932-1936, graduated).

Graduated by correspondence from the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the CPSU (1947). Studied in absentia at the Faculty of History and Philology of the Karelo-Finnish state university: according to some sources - even before the war, in 1940-1941, according to others - in 1946-1951.

Biography

After the death of his father, together with his mother, they moved to Mozdok.

After completing the seven-year plan in 1931, Andropov worked as an assistant projectionist at the railway club at the Mozdok station, as a telegraph worker. Member of the Komsomol since 1930. From August to December 1930, Yuri Andropov worked first as a telegraph worker, and from December 1930 to April 1932 as an apprentice and assistant projectionist of the Railway Workers' Club. From 1931 he worked as a sailor in the river fleet at the Volga Shipping Company. “I ask you to accept me in the river navigation technical school at the department of navigation or shipbuilding. Currently, I work as an assistant projectionist, I have 2-year work experience ”(Andropov). In 1932 he entered the Rybinsk River Technical School, from which he graduated in 1936, after which he worked at the Rybinsk Shipyard. Volodarsky. In 1935 he married the daughter of the manager of the Cherepovets branch of the State Bank, Nina Ivanovna Engalycheva, who studied at the same technical school at the electrical engineering faculty, and later worked in the Yaroslavl archive of the NKVD. They had two children - Evgenia and Vladimir.

In 1936 he became the released secretary of the Komsomol organization of the technical school of water transport in Rybinsk. Then he was promoted to the post of Komsomol organizer (Komsomol organizer) of the Rybinsk shipyard.

Appointed head of department of the city committee of the Komsomol of Rybinsk, then head of the department of the regional committee of the Komsomol of the Yaroslavl region. Already in December 1938, he was elected first secretary of the Yaroslavl regional committee of the Komsomol. He lived in Yaroslavl in a nomenklatura house on Sovetskaya Street (house 4). In 1938-1940 he headed the regional Komsomol organization in Yaroslavl.

In the Karelo-Finnish SSR (1940-1951)

In June 1940, Yuri Andropov was sent by the head of the Komsomol to the newly formed Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic (according to the Moscow Peace Treaty of 1940, part of the territory of Finland was ceded to the USSR).

Then, in 1940, in Petrozavodsk, Andropov met Tatyana Filippovna Lebedeva, whom he married after the outbreak of the war, and in August 1941 she gave birth to his son.

“Yuri Vladimirovich himself did not ask to be sent to the war, underground or partisans, as many older workers insisted on. Moreover, he often complained of kidney problems. And generally on poor health. He also had one more reason for refusing to send him underground or to a partisan detachment: his wife lived in Belomorsk, she had just given birth to a child. And his first wife, who lived in Yaroslavl, bombarded us with letters complaining that he was not helping their children much, that they were starving and walking without shoes, they broke off (and we forced Yuri Vladimirovich to help his children from his first wife). ... All this, taken together, did not give me the moral right ... to send Yu.V. Andropov as partisans, guided by party discipline. It was somehow inconvenient to say: "Do you want to fight?" A man hides behind his nomenclature reservation, for his illness, for his wife and child "(From the unpublished manuscript of G. N. Kupriyanov" Guerrilla War in the North ").

“In July 1949, when the leading workers of Leningrad had already been arrested (see Leningrad affair - Approx.), Malenkov began to send commission after commission to us in Petrozavodsk to select material for the arrest of me and other comrades who had previously worked in Leningrad. accused of the following: we - the workers of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Kupriyanov and Vlasov, politically short-sighted people, rush with the underground workers and extol their work, ask them to reward them with orders. I said that I have no reason not to trust people, that they are all honest and loyal to the party, that they have proved their loyalty to the Motherland in practice, working in difficult conditions, risking This whole conversation took place in the Central Committee of the Party of Karelia, all the secretaries were present. I said, looking for support from my comrades, that here Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, my first deputy, knows well all these people, since he took part in the selection, training and sending them to the rear of the enemy, when he worked as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol, and can confirm the correctness of my words. And so, to my great amazement, Yuri Vladimirovich stood up and declared: “I did not take any part in organizing the underground work. I don't know anything about the work of the underground. And I can't vouch for anyone who worked underground. "

During the war years he used the underground nickname "Mohican".

In 1944, Yu. V. Andropov switched to party work: from that time on, he began to occupy the post of the second secretary of the Petrozavodsk city party committee. After the Great Patriotic War Andropov worked as the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Karelo-Finnish SSR (1947-1951).

For his great organizational work to mobilize the youth of the republic during the war years and to restore the economy destroyed by the war, participation in organizing the partisan movement, Yuri Andropov was awarded two Orders of the Red Banner of Labor and the medal "Partisan of the Patriotic War" of the 1st degree.

Elected as a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the KFSSR (1947-1955).

In the Central Committee of the CPSU and the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs

On June 21, 1951, with the assistance of Otto Kuusinen, by decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), he was transferred to Moscow to the apparatus of the Central Committee of the Party, where he initially worked as an inspector. As an inspector of the Central Committee, he oversaw the work of the party organizations of the Baltic republics. He participated in the work of the commission that visited the Soviet military who participated in the Korean War, in particular, visited Mukden. Then he worked as the head of a subdivision of the Department of Party, Trade Union and Komsomol Bodies of the Central Committee of the CPSU.

In May 1953, Andropov, at the suggestion of VM Molotov, transferred to the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Andropov headed the 4th European Department (Poland, Czechoslovakia) and trained in the Scandinavian department under the leadership of Andrei Aleksandrov-Agentov, in October 1953 he was appointed Minister-Counselor in Hungary. Being sent to Hungary as an embassy counselor was a demotion.

Ambassador to Hungary

From July 1954 to March 1957, the USSR ambassador to Hungary.

He played an active role in suppressing the uprising against the communist regime in Hungary. He also managed to persuade Janos Kadar to head the Hungarian government formed by Moscow. According to other sources (the memoirs of V.A. Soviet troops to Budapest.

Head of department and secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU

Since March 1957, head of the department of socialist countries of the Central Committee of the CPSU. At the XXII Congress of the CPSU (1961) he was elected a member of the Central Committee (1961-1984), after which he was appointed Secretary of the Central Committee (from November 23, 1962 to June 21, 1967). And in 1964 Andropov took part in the removal of N. S. Khrushchev.

Chairman of the KGB (1967-1982)

From May 18, 1967 to May 26, 1982 - the head of the KGB. In this status, Andropov was approved as a candidate member of the Politburo (from June 21, 1967 to April 27, 1973), and then a member of the Politburo (from April 27, 1973 to February 9, 1984). Over the 15 years of his leadership, the state security bodies have significantly strengthened and expanded their control over all spheres of life of the state and society.

One of the activities of the KGB was the fight against the dissident movement, Russian and other nationalist movements. Under Andropov, human rights defenders were tried, different methods suppression of dissent, various forms of extrajudicial harassment were practiced (for example, compulsory treatment in psychiatric hospitals). Andropov received special instructions not to respond to petitions for the release of dissidents. On the initiative of Andropov, the expulsion of dissidents began. So, in 1974, the writer A.I.Solzhenitsyn was exiled abroad and then deprived of his citizenship. In 1980, Academician A. D. Sakharov was exiled to the city of Gorky, where he was under the constant control of the KGB. Archival documents also point to Andropov's leadership in the persecution of dissidents.

The general strengthening of the position of socialism forced the imperialists to abandon attempts to crush socialism by means of a "frontal attack". These changes are certainly in our interests. At the same time, one cannot fail to see that the enemy has not abandoned his goals. Now, especially in conditions of detente, he is looking for and will continue to look for other means of struggle against the socialist countries, trying to cause “erosion” in them, negative processes that would soften and ultimately weaken socialist society. In this regard, imperialist forces are pinning great hopes on subversive activities that the imperialist bosses carry out through their special services. One of the secret instructions of the American special services in this regard directly states: "In the end, we must not only preach anti-Sovietism and anti-communism, but also take care of constructive changes in the socialist countries" ... ... At the initial stage, it is envisaged to establish contacts with all sorts of disaffected persons in the Soviet Union and to create illegal groups out of them. At the next stage, it is planned to consolidate such groups and turn them into a "resistance organization", that is, into an active opposition. ... Recently, a certain Allen von Shark, in a book dedicated to the struggle against our state, wrote: “if the state (that is Soviet Union) will take any steps against such renegades. (note, he himself calls them renegades), it is necessary to advertise these measures as unfair as possible in order to arouse, on the one hand, sympathy for them, for the renegades, and on the other hand, dissatisfaction with the communist system. " The imperialist intelligence services do not care that the people they raise on the shield are scum and renegades, it is important that this gives them a reason once again to come out with attacks on our system, to cast a shadow on our party, and this is their main goal. Recently, the KGB has carried out preventive measures against a number of people who harbored hostile political intentions in the form of bitter nationalism. In Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Armenia, a number of nationalists have been prosecuted for openly anti-Soviet activities. In almost all of these cases, as the guilty and the persons we have prevented themselves now admit, their activities were inspired by subversive centers located in the West ... money, secret writing and printing equipment. Ideological sabotage is carried out in a variety of forms: from attempts to create anti-Soviet underground groups and direct calls for the overthrow of Soviet power (there are also such) to subversive actions that are carried out under the flag of "improving socialism", so to speak, on the verge of law.

In 1972, after the Munich events, he initiated the creation of a counter-terrorism unit, which was later named "Alpha".

Andropov paid special attention to control over the work of the state security organs of the countries of the socialist camp. Andropov was a supporter of the most decisive measures in relation to those countries of the socialist camp that sought to pursue domestic and foreign policies independent of the USSR. In August 1968, he influenced the decision to send troops of the Warsaw Pact countries to Czechoslovakia. At the end of 1979, at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, he proposed assistance to Afghanistan with weapons, but not military force. Subsequently, Andropov was forced to sign a document on the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan.

In 1974 he became the Hero of Socialist Labor, and in 1976 Andropov (on the same day as his opponent, Interior Minister N. A. Shchelokov) was awarded the title of "General of the Army".

Suslov's successor, Brezhnev's successor

In May 1982, Andropov left the leadership of the KGB and was elected secretary of the Central Committee (from May 24 to November 12, 1982). Even then, many perceived this as the appointment of a successor to the decrepit Brezhnev.

After Brezhnev's death on November 12, 1982, Andropov was elected General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee by the Plenum of the Central Committee. Andropov strengthened his position by becoming Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on June 16, 1983.

Those who knew Andropov testify that intellectually he stood out against the general gray background of the Politburo of stagnant years, was a creative person, not devoid of self-irony. In the circle of trusted people, he could afford relatively liberal reasoning. Unlike Brezhnev, he was indifferent to flattery and luxury, did not tolerate bribery and embezzlement. It is clear, however, that Andropov adhered to a tough conservative position on matters of principle. General of the KGB of the USSR Philip Bobkov recalled:

In the first months of his reign, he proclaimed a course aimed at socio-economic transformation. However, all the changes were largely reduced to administrative measures, strengthening discipline among party officials and at workplaces, exposing corruption in the inner circle of the ruling elite. In some cities of the USSR, law enforcement agencies began to apply measures, the rigidity of which in the 1980s seemed unusual to the population. For example, in Leningrad during working hours, police raids began in cinemas, large department stores and other crowded places, during which documents were totally checked in order to identify absentees at work. The severity of the checks was such that some of them included schoolchildren who were truant from their lessons, who decided to attend an afternoon movie screening. A few days later, an official letter from the law enforcement agencies came to the name of the school director, reporting on the capture of truants, indicating their names.

During his time there was an incident with a South Korean Boeing in 1983.

Under Andropov, a massive release of licensed gramophone records began by popular Western performers of those genres (rock, disco, synth-pop) that were previously considered ideologically unacceptable - this was supposed to undermine the economic base of speculation in gramophone records and magnetic recordings. Andropov especially appreciated Vysotsky, loved his songs "

The political and economic system remained unchanged. And ideological control and repression against dissidents have intensified. In foreign policy, confrontation with the West has intensified. Since June 1983, Andropov has been combining the post of general secretary of the party with the post of head of state - Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. But he remained at the top post for just over a year. The last months of his life, Andropov was forced to rule the country from the hospital ward of the Kremlin clinic. At the same time, some experts, including political scientist Sergei Gavrov, believe that Andropov could have become a "Russian Deng Xiaoping", carry out the necessary reforms and save the USSR from collapse.

Andropov died on February 9, 1984, at 4:50 pm, according to the official version, due to kidney failure due to years of gout. The funeral was scheduled for 12 noon on February 14, at the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow. Margaret Thatcher flew in to the funeral ceremony, and George W. Bush was also present.

Awards

He was awarded four Orders of Lenin, orders October revolution, Red Banner (1944), three Orders of the Red Banner of Labor (1944, 19 ??, 19 ??), other awards.

Family

There were two marriages. The first family (since 1935) broke up in the pre-war years. First wife Nina Ivanovna Engalicheva (1915-1994), from whom the daughter Eugene (b. 1936) and the son Vladimir (03.03.1940 - 1975). In his second marriage with Tatyana Filippovna Lebedeva, Yuri Vladimirovich also had two children - a son Igor (1941-2006) and a daughter Irina. Irina Yuryevna Andropova was married to Mikhail Filippov, an actor of the Mayakovsky Theater.

Memory

• Andropovsky district, Stavropol Territory
• The name Andropov was borne by the city of Rybinsk in 1984-1989.
• Avenue in Moscow, streets in Yaroslavl, Petrozavodsk and in Stupino near Moscow are named after Andropov.
• The name of Yu. V. Andropov was given to the Klimovsk specialized cartridge plant.
• The name of Yu. V. Andropov was given to the Leningrad Higher Military-Political School of the Air Defense Forces (the school was disbanded in 1992).
• Andropov erected monuments in his native village of Soluno-Dmitrievsky, in Petrozavodsk, in the Kremlin necropolis in Moscow, as well as memorial plaques in Moscow, Petrozavodsk, Yaroslavl, Rybinsk, Nagutsky.

Film incarnations

• Kolchitsky, Galiks Nikolaevich ("Black Square", 1990)
• Zakharchenko, Vadim Viktorovich ("Murder on Zhdanovskaya", 1992)
• Lanovoy, Vasily Semyonovich (Brezhnev, 2005)
• Zholobov, Vyacheslav Ivanovich ("Red Square", 2005; "The Fog Disperses", 2009)
• Stoskov, Yuri Viktorovich ("KGB in a tuxedo", 2005)
• Kozakov, Mikhail Mikhailovich ("The Last Meeting", 2010)

In the personal fund of Yuri Andropov, kept for decades under the heading "Soviet. Secret", an access code to his encrypted biography was found. The official biography of the head of the KGB and the secretary general turned out to be nothing more than a legend.

Legendary personality

In the USSR, they were sympathetic to the fact that the leaders bore party pseudonyms instead of surnames. The revolution is a conspiratorial affair. However, the case of Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, a typical nomenklatura worker, is unique against this background. His official biography is a true legend of a professional intelligence officer. The Itogi observer was the second after Mikhail Gorbachev (there is a record that Andropov's personal file was issued to the author of perestroika in the late 1980s) managed to get acquainted with the recently declassified documents of the Kremlin archive. In the personal fund of the secretary general, which for decades was kept under the heading "Sov. Secret", among thousands of papers, an access code to his encrypted biography was found. As it turned out, the future head of the KGB, and then the party and country, did everything to retouch information about himself and his loved ones.

Andropov, like dozens of his colleagues in the party apparatus, can be understood: in those days, the “wrong” social origin guaranteed the label “a fragment of the exploiting classes” with all the ensuing consequences. Apparently, this is why the legend was created, according to which our hero had a new place of birth, and a "correct" social origin, as well as, apparently, a surname, first name and patronymic. As a result, a prosperous native of a Moscow bourgeois family turned into a hereditary proletarian from Ossetia. Well, these were the "rules of survival" in that difficult era.

Cursed biography

The new biography of the future secretary general was not easy to write. According to the statement of the 18-year-old assistant projectionist from Mozdok, Yuri Andropov, with a request to be admitted to the Rybinsk River Technical School on March 22, 1932, he lost his father at the age of two, that is, in 1916. In his autobiography, written in August 1937, 23-year-old Andropov already reports that his dad died in 1919. There are also discrepancies when comparing the mother's personal data. In 1939 Andropov points out: "Mother died in 1931". And a couple of years before that, the date is 1930. In another document, Yuri Vladimirovich records: "Mother died in 1929". In her 1937 autobiography, information appears about her social roots: "Mother comes from Moscow (family of a craftsman)." Less than two years later, in another autobiography, we read: "Mother was born into the family of a washerwoman (or a maid) ... She was brought up into the Fleckenstein family. Fleckenstein himself was a watchmaker. According to documents, he is listed as a merchant. He died in 1915. . His wife now lives in Moscow. She is a pensioner. "

Vigilant party members in information about the "merchant" were keenly interested in the harsh year of 1937, when the question of Andropov's origin was raised when the secretary of the Yaroslavl regional committee of the Komsomol joined the party. Moreover, in the same year in the local party cell there was a rumor that Yura's father was also a class enemy - an officer of the tsarist army. It would seem that the way to the party has been forbidden to him. But Andropov showed iron restraint and presented his colleagues with documents refuting incriminating evidence. This was followed by his personal meeting with the instructor of the Central Committee of the Komsomol Kapustina, who served as a party investigator. During the conversation, Andropov told about himself: "Father is a railway employee. Mother (in no autobiography and questionnaire he never mentioned her name, patronymic and surname. -" Results ") comes from a family of burghers of the Ryazan province. family of watchmakers of the Finnish citizen Fleckenstein, who lived in Moscow, where she was brought up. From the age of 17 she worked as a teacher. " He also said that "in the given time his aunt lives at his expense, the sister of his own grandmother (by his mother). " in this case is simply necessary: ​​she is a peasant woman from the Ryazan province, which means that Andropov's mother is of the correct "social orientation."

Andropov's son from his second marriage Igor recalls how his father opened up in the mid-70s: “From the 39th to the 45th year, when I was in Karelia, in my memory there were 10-12 guys who could easily have walked my path. , this is the will of time and chance

ah. "According to archival materials, the case did not play a decisive role here. Like some other party associates, Andropov made his way to the top, adapting his personal data to the current political situation and convincing the inspectors of this legend.

One way or another, Comrade Kapustina became wary and decided to double-check the candidate for the third time. To this end, the instructor of the Central Committee sends the executive officer of the Yaroslavl regional committee of the Komsomol, Pulyaev, to Moscow. He, without further ado, decided to interrogate the wife of the merchant Fleckenstein - Evdokia Mikhailovna Fleckenstein, a person, as further events will show, directly interested in hiding the truth. She confirmed that the mother of the Komsomol leader had been thrown by her baby to the temporary merchant of the 2nd guild. After the death of the merchant, she herself lives by her labor. And suddenly further: “According to Andropov’s adoptive grandmother Flekenstein, it’s not his aunt who lives with Andropov, but his nanny (Anastasia Zhurzhalina. -“ Itogi ”)." Kapustina's conclusion is disappointing: "Comrade Andropov gave incorrect information about the social origin of his mother." Career end? No: Yuri Vladimirovich was simply demanded to explain himself for the fourth time.

On January 10, 1939, he repeated the legend he had learned by heart: “My mother was taken as a baby into the Fleckenstein family. Fleckenstein himself was a watchmaker. Fleckenstein lived and worked in Moscow. She did not lose her electoral rights. My mother's mother was a maid in Moscow. She came from Ryazan. " How is the misunderstanding with the aunt-nanny explained? It is very simple: "In the questionnaire Zhurzhalina is indicated by me as an aunt, because I just find it difficult to determine the degree of kinship (like herself)."

The controllers did not get to Zhurzhalina (she died in 1979), although she could tell them that in the Fleckenstein family she acted first as a governess and then as a nanny for Yuri Vladimirovich. What about the social status of the grandfather? Answer: “I don’t know about it now, but I made attempts to find out. My grandfather (note, not an adopted grandfather, but“ mine. ”-“ Results ”) traded, but that he was a merchant, and even the 1st or 2nd guilds did not speak. " Finally, Yuri Vladimirovich asks "to resolve the question about me as soon as possible, this damned biography directly interferes with my work." After that, Andropov was forever left behind. Why?

Jeweler

Perhaps several circumstances played a role in the successful outcome of the case. First, the firm position of Andropov himself and the inability of the party investigators to complete the personnel business. Secondly, in the late 30s, when the class struggle escalated so much that there was simply no one to fill the nomenklatura vacancies, the CPSU (b) began to take people with a difficult biography. In addition, Andropov's questionnaire, written on February 10, 1939, was impeccable: he did not participate in anything, did not participate, and was not involved in anything.

Well, what really happened? Andropov's mother was called Evgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein. In the Karelian Party Archives, her photograph has been preserved with the indication of her name and patronymic. She lived in Moscow. This is known for certain. We turn to an open source - the yearbook "General alphabet of residents of Moscow." From it we learn: in the First See at the address Bolshaya Lubyanka, house 26 (home phone 215-30), with late XIX her father Karl Frantsevich Fleckenstein, a Finnish native, a watch and jewelry merchant, lived for centuries. These stereotyped information wandered from yearbook to yearbook until 1915 inclusive, until Andropov's grandfather died without having survived the "patriotic" pogrom. An interesting detail: according to one KGB legend, at the Lubyanka, the chief of the all-powerful department among some of his colleagues had the nickname Jeweler. True, the colleagues were sure that Andropov's father ran the shop.

Information about the grandfather is also contained in the annually issued "Reference book on persons who received merchant and trade certificates in Moscow". From it, in particular, it becomes clear that he was not a merchant of either the 1st or 2nd guild. Charles

Frantsevich only had a license to trade in jewelry and watches.

As we learned, Andropov eventually managed to prove to the inspectors that grandmother Evdokia Mikhailovna had nothing to do with the jewelry trade under the tsarist regime. For persuasiveness, she even secured a certificate from the Moscow City Council. It followed from it that Fleckenstein's wife was not deprived of her voting rights. Later, her grandson also used this document in the course of party inquiries. Although other sources stubbornly testify that after the death of her husband, Evdokia Mikhailovna took the helm family business and held it in her hands until the February Revolution. In the reference books about the persons who received merchant and trade certificates for the city of Moscow after 1915, it is she who is listed. A native of Finland, living on Bolshaya Lubyanka, in house 26, which she also owned. Apparently, after another (1917) pogrom with business, it was decided to end it forever and start building a "proletarian biography." The 1918 Constitution of the RSFSR clearly defined the categories of citizens with and without electoral rights. Using hired labor for the purpose of making a profit, living on the income from the enterprise and income from real estate, Andropov's grandmother was to become a classic deprivation with a corresponding wolf ticket (a similar fate, of course, threatened her daughter and grandson). Apparently, that is why it was decided to move out of a multi-storey building on Bolshaya Lubyanka to Aleksandrovskaya Square (now - Borby Square, not far from Maryina Roshcha), house 9/1. At the same time, the grandmother was able to transfer to new apartment former home telephone number: 215-30. Then something had to be done with the documents. Then - to create a legend about an abandoned mother and her life in Ossetia. The game was worth the candle: all these efforts provided Yuri Andropov with a dizzying rise up the career ladder in the future.

Operational alias

Until his last days Andropov remained a legendary person in every sense. Shortly before his death, he revealed a terrible secret to the attending physician Yevgeny Chazov: “Recently, my people in Rostov went to see one person who traveled to the North Caucasus, the places where I was born and where my parents lived, and collected information about them. My mother is an orphan. , as a baby, a rich Jew took him into his house. They even wanted to play on this that I hide my true origin. "

Information about Andropov's mother first appears in the annual Moscow "Alphabetical Index of Addresses of Moscow Residents" in 1913, when Evgenia Karlovna began teaching at the Moscow girls' gymnasium in Minsbach. There are similar entries in the yearbook for 1914 and 1915. Stop. How is it that Yuri Andropov, while his mother teaches Moscow school girls, was born on the remote outskirts of the empire in 1914? It is clear that none. According to elementary logic, the future secretary general was born in Moscow. This sensational conclusion is supported by the story of Andropov's grandson Andrei's first marriage. According to him, the "foster parents" (here the legend is unshakable) rich grandfather and grandmother found Evgenia Karlovna "a suitable spouse." By the way, by a strange coincidence, the archives did not contain records for 1914 about babies born in Moscow in the Bolshaya Lubyanka area.

The facts are inexorable: a year before the start of the First World War, the mother of the future secretary general simply could not be in Ossetia and marry the railway worker Vladimir Andropov, who, according to the memoirs of Yuri Vladimirovich, was godlessly drinking. By and large, this can only be said about the ardently unloved deceased stepfather, and not about his own father.

Recall that in a statement from 1932, the future secretary general will write that his father died when he was two years old. That is, in 1916, and then everything converges. Presumably, Andropov's own father either left the family or simply died in the Mother See. And maybe even at the front, if the rumor that he served in the tsarist army is true. The future secretary general, along with his mother, all this time lived in Moscow, most likely VP

lot until February 1917. Then the mother, apparently thanks to a rich dowry, was able to remarry, having left for the outskirts of the empire, which subsequently made it possible to correct her biography, and at the same time the place of birth and surname of her son.

After the death of Vladimir Andropov in 1919 from typhus, Yevgenia Karlovna married the assistant to the locomotive driver Fedorov for the third time. When Andropov graduated from the seven-year school in 1931, his official name was Grigory Vladimirovich Andropov-Fedorov. At what stage Grigory turned into Yuri and when the prefix Fedorov dropped, it is not known exactly. However, judging by the declassified archival documents, Vladimirovich, Andropov, Fedorov, and even Yuri are all, if you like, operational pseudonyms.

The pogrom years

Why did a mother with a small child in her arms decide to leave the Mother See after the February Revolution? The answer to this question was partially given by Andropov himself, having told in 1939 in an explanatory note about the pogrom of 1915, which his supposedly adopted grandfather did not survive. As it turns out, Yuri Vladimirovich himself and his entire family survived the rampant military "patriotism".

The riots began on the evening of May 27 at the Moscow factories of Tsindel and Schrader - the pogrom was originally anti-German. The next morning, a still small crowd appeared at the Borovitsky Gate. People held portraits of Nicholas II and sang "God Save the Tsar." To the sound of the national anthem, more and more masses moved to Red Square to the monument to the main patriots Minin and Pozharsky. From there, part of the rioters rushed to the Upper rows, where the shops of Einem and Tsindel were destroyed. Having dealt with the shops in Kitai-Gorod, the crowd partly went to the Lubyanka, partly to Petrovka and Kuznetsky Most to continue their business.

During the "patriotic" procession, Muscovites broke windows and robbed shops whose owners bore any non-Russian surnames, since then they were written right on the windows. With the onset of darkness, even decently dressed people began to appear in the streets with looted things. The "patriots" could not miss Fleckenstein's store - they were too noticeable a target. Yuri Andropov, of course, did not remember the events of 1915, but most likely he knew about them from the stories of his mother and grandmother. Moreover, the future secretary general and his family seem to have gone through a period of pogrom during the February Revolution.

The Kremlin archives have preserved a work by the 18-year-old Andropov, dedicated to the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky. Yura, in particular, writes: " February revolution spawned pogroms and packs of black hundreds. "Damn you, you black-hundred bastard!" - exclaims Mayakovsky. "In general, needless to say that the Andropov family had a lot of good reasons to change their registration and change the history of Yuri Vladimirovich's origin beyond recognition. After two pogroms, you will run away not only to the Caucasus. Apparently, these experiences forced the relatives of Yuri Vladimirovich to come up with a legend for his son, who still lives and lives under a new regime that easily ruined the fate of millions of people. The "double bottom" time gave rise to legends. Before us is only one of them. How many more such "double" biographies are hidden in the Kremlin archives ?. ...

By order of Vladimir Putin, in the late 90s, a memorial plaque to Yuri Andropov, dismantled in 1991, was restored on the FSB building on Lubyanka Square. Meanwhile, in Moscow there is a building in which carnations and roses would be no less appropriate for the idol of the Chekists. A few hundred meters from the FSB building complex - on Bolshaya Lubyanka, near house 26, where, apparently, the hero of our publication was born.

Fleckenstein's "workshop" has survived to this day, having changed little appearance and even keeping their numbering. By the way, the historical building does not have any protection status. After a major reconstruction in 1995-2004, on the basis of an order by Yuri Luzhkov, the Andropov house is in the shared ownership of the mayor's office and the developer company. Soon, the building where one of the brightest characters saw the light recent history will be populated by commercial firms ...

Andropov Yuri Vladimirovich (1914-1984), Soviet statesman and party leader.

After graduating from the technical school of water transport, he worked as the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the shipyard in Rybinsk.

In 1939 he joined the party. He was the 1st secretary of the Yaroslavl regional committee of the Komsomol, then the 1st secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol of the union Karelo-Finnish republic, created after the war with Finland (1939-1940). In 1951, Andropov was transferred to Moscow to work in the International Department of the CPSU Central Committee, where he worked under the leadership of M. A. Suslov, the future chief party ideologist.

Andropov's career developed brilliantly. In 1953 he became Ambassador to Hungary. Soon the Hungarians made an attempt to break out of the socialist camp. Andropov sent encrypted messages to Moscow demanding that troops be immediately sent into revolted Budapest. On November 1, 1956, Soviet tank columns crossed the Hungarian border. The uprising was suppressed. In March 1957, Andropov headed the Central Committee's department for relations with the communist parties of the countries of the socialist bloc. He began to draw gifted scientists, analysts, and publicists closer to him, providing them with an opportunity for creative activity within the framework of the harsh communist regime.

In 1967, Andropov was appointed chairman of the KGB. Under him, a special Fifth Directorate was created within the department to control the intelligentsia and combat ideological sabotage. A group of 20 people worked in the same department, which developed a methodology for combating terror. Later, on the initiative of Andropov, special detachments "Alpha" and "Vympel" were formed, whose task was to destroy the terrorists and free the hostages.

In 1973 Andropov was elected a member of the Politburo. In December 1979, after discussing the situation in Afghanistan, together with L.I.Brezhnev, D.F.Ustinov, A.A.Gromyko and M.A.

Andropov prepared in advance a team of like-minded people, which included N. I. Ryzhkov, M. S. Gorbachev, E. K. Ligachev, E. A. Shevardnadze, V. A. Kryuchkov. Therefore, after the death of Brezhnev (November 10, 1982), Andropov easily became General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee. He held this post for only 15 months (he died on February 9, 1984 in Moscow), but left a noticeable mark on the public consciousness.

In the area of foreign policy he failed to achieve success. The war in Afghanistan was still smoldering, negotiations with the USA and the countries of Western Europe did not give any results. The main difference between the Andropov era was the slogan: “Strengthen discipline! To put things in order at work and in everyday life! "

The concept of "order" also included the fight against bribery. Many high-ranking officials from the party apparatus of the republics and various economic bodies were arrested. Started prosecution close and relatives of the former secretary general: N. A. Shchelokova, Yu. M. Churbanov, G. L. Brezhneva. Such events were widely supported by the population. Faith in a "strong hand" was resurrected.

People associated the last attempt of the state to improve the life of Soviet citizens with the political legacy of Andropov.