Word: brezhnevs
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...world knew very little about former KGB Chief Yuri Andropov when ic succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Soviet Union's Communist Party last November. Almost immediately, a gaggle of professional and amateur Kremlinologists scrambled to fill the information gap. Thus far all but one of their books have been either disappointingly speculative or based on stale data. The exception is this lively and provocative portrait by Zhores Medvedev, an exiled Soviet scientist living in London. Medvedev, 57, relied in part on the scholarly skills and resources of his twin brother, Roy Medvedev, who has remained...
Zhores Medvedev portrays Andropov as an austere, highly intelligent operator whose key weapon in his battle for Kremlin supremacy was the KGB he headed for 15 years. Andropov and his supporters relied on the intelligence agency to discredit the ailing Brezhnev, his family and network of associates. The Andropov aim was to pressure Brezhnev into resigning while besmirching potential rivals from the party chiefs camp...
Medvedev offers some compelling particulars. In early 1982, he says, Andropov ordered the KGB to arrest two close friends of Brezhnev's daughter Galina for diamond smuggling. News of the arrests was leaked to the Western press, and Galina was dispatched to the Kremlin hospital, supposedly because of a "nervous breakdown." According to the author, Brezhnev's doubly distraught daughter attended her father's funeral in the company of two well-dressed secret policemen, who appeared to be members of the family. The funeral was televised live, Medvedev explains, and the KGB was afraid that Galina might...
Neither would Soviet prestige. Some European officials and some members of the Reagan Administration have convinced themselves that Andropov is aching for a summit as a kind of status symbol, to prove his legitimacy as Leonid Brezhnev's successor and to underscore the Soviet Union's standing as an equal of the U.S. Yet it is just as plausible that Andropov is under pressure to prove to his hard-line comrades that he is tough enough to hold out for a summit on his own terms. Nor is it realistic to think that a productive summit...
...this may turn out to be a highly selective and perhaps misleading use of history. There is a big difference between Nixon in 1972 and Reagan in 1984. For one thing, Nixon was the Kremlin's candidate. Brezhnev & Co. had seen the arch cold warrior transformed into the champion of detente, and they wanted him reelected. Reagan will surely not have that dubious endorsement next year. The Soviets had hopes that Reagan would undergo a Nixonian metamorphosis, but they probably have no such hopes any longer. Regardless of his tactical and rhetorical readjustments of late, they...