Word: andropov
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...regional administrator, Gorbachev caught the eye of two powerful patrons: Mikhail Suslov, who was for many years the Soviet Union's chief ideologist, and Yuri Andropov, longtime head of the KGB secret police. Suslov, who commanded partisan forces in the Stavropol area during World War II, kept tabs on promising young apparatchiks in the region. Andropov often vacationed at hot-springs resorts near Stavropol. Gorbachev in effect served as his host. Suslov and Andropov engineered Gorbachev's appointment to higher and higher posts in the regional party and, in 1978, his sudden call to Moscow as a member...
...Andropov, who became Soviet leader after the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, continued to groom Gorbachev as a key lieutenant. After Andropov was incapacitated by kidney disease in late 1983, it was Gorbachev who reportedly shuttled daily from the Kremlin to the hospital outside Moscow where Andropov lay hooked up to a dialysis machine. "During his last months, Andropov ran the U.S.S.R. through Gorbachev," says one Soviet historian. Gorbachev's time to run the country in his own name had not yet come when Andropov died in February 1984. The Kremlin Old Guard conferred the leadership...
...meeting of the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Union's nominal parliament. Gorbachev had been widely expected to use that session to assume the presidency, formally known as the Chairmanship of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet. That would have followed the example of his three predecessors, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Chernenko. Instead, Gorbachev rose in Moscow's columned Great Kremlin Palace to declare that his duties demanded such "intensity" that he should concentrate on the party leadership. He then nominated Gromyko, 75, who he described as an "eminent political figure" and also, significantly, as "one of the oldest party...
...televised speech was one of the most dramatic demonstrations yet of Gorbachev's determination to spur the economy by using tactics advocated by his mentor, the late Yuri Andropov. Western analysts believe that the tough talk may signal a new phase in Gorbachev's ascendancy. Two months after he named three of his own men to the ruling Politburo, Western diplomats argue, Gorbachev is now increasing the pressure on some of the remaining gerontocrats in that body to retire. Most prominent among them may be Premier Nikolai Tikhonov, 80, who oversees all the ministers excoriated by Gorbachev. Kremlinologists noted...
...toughness and a certain level of sophistication are intended to be the hallmarks of the Gorbachev era, there was an extraordinary reminder in Soviet cinemas last week of the man who inspired those qualities: Andropov. In a respectful 75-min. film, Andropov's wife Tatyana (not even seen in public until Andropov's funeral) reads love poems written by her husband; his son Igor praises his father's judgment and understanding of human nature. Andropov's 15 years as head of the KGB are given scant attention. If there was a deeper message in the week's events...