Word: kgb
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...former KGB chief, it was said, would never be allowed to rule the Soviet Union. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov confounded such predictions when he assumed control of the country's Communist Party in November 1982. Within seven months, Andropov had also secured the important title of Chairman of the Defense Council and been elected President of the Soviet Union. It had taken his predecessor, Leonid Brezhnev, 13 years to accumulate all the same trappings of power. The new Soviet leader, it seemed, was a man in a hurry...
...Soviet people, Andropov seemed a study in gray, as enigmatic as the fleeting smile he showed now and again in official photographs. Given Andropov's years at the helm of the Committee for State Security (in Russian, Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, or KGB), some of his countrymen feared that he would turn out to be a reconstructed Stalinist, intent on imposing order on a society grown lax and corrupt in Brezhnev's final years. Others wishfully thought that he might emerge as a liberal, eager to improve relations with the West and reform the Soviet Union's cumbersome...
...when Brezhnev wanted to strengthen party control of the KGB, Andropov was the consensus choice to lead the organization. He became a candidate member of the Politburo at the same time and a full voting member in 1973. During his 15 years at the head of the Soviet security and intelligence empire, Andropov transformed a demoralized organization into a thoroughly professional force capable not only of keeping order at home but of advancing Soviet interests abroad with growing sophistication. In contrast to predecessors who used mass terror to suppress dissent, Andropov employed a broad range of punishments selectively tailored...
Andropov altered the stereotype of the ham-fisted Soviet spy in the ill-fitting suit by encouraging KGB recruiters to go after the best that the Soviet academic world had to offer. KGB foreign agents grew more adept at pilfering high technology and stepped up efforts to spread Moscow's influence around the globe through propaganda and disinformation. But Turkish Gunman Men met Ali Agca's bungled attempt to kill Pope John Paul II in May 1981 tarnished the KGB's new image. Suspicions of a KGB link in the papal plot through Bulgarian surrogates gave rise...
...Brezhnev's health began to falter, Andropov's influence with the Kremlin's inner circle grew. In May 1982, Andropov was relieved of his position as head of the KGB and promoted to the spot on the party's powerful Central Committee Secretariat that had been left vacant by the death of Ideologist Mikhail Suslov. It was seen as a move to "launder" Andropov for the top party post. When Brezhnev died six months later, Andropov had lined up enough support to beat back the challenge of Konstantin Chernenko, who was widely believed to be Brezhnev...