Word: kgb
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...KGB agents around the globe are ultimately cogs in a bureaucracy centered in Moscow that in many respects is just like any other in the Soviet Union, down to its own five-year plan. Because the KGB is organized in a rigid, vertical chain of command, cronyism is widespread. Many of its officers are not above currying favor with their superiors and sometimes compound their mistakes by trying to cover them up. According to Defector Vladimir Kuzichkin, this most secretive of organizations has had its share of minor security lapses. An angry old woman searching for a toy store located...
...would be equally wrong, however, to underestimate the spy machine that the new man in the Kremlin built during his years at Dzerzhinsky Square. Andropov has received more raw information about things at home and abroad than any of his predecessors. He has had access to the KGB's dossiers on his Politburo colleagues. If he has resorted to repression as an instrument of social reform at home, he has shown subtlety in exploiting divisions in the Western alliance to further Soviet interests abroad. Predicts London-based East European Expert Leopold Labedz: "Andropov will prove to be a dangerous combination...
Given the KGB's awesome power and a well-earned reputation for ruthlessness and brutality, it had long been assumed that the men who rule the Soviet Union would never allow a secret-police chief to hold the nation's highest post. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov, 68, surmounted that obstacle last November, when he was chosen by the Communist Party's Central Committee to succeed Brezhnev. Andropov was relieved of his job as KGB chief six months earlier and moved to the party Secretariat, but the bureaucratic fig leaf deceived...
During his first three months in office, the neatly tailored and coolly authoritative Andropov has worked hard to shake the worldwide stereotype of the KGB heavy in the ill-fitting suit. In a rumor campaign that began before Brezhnev's death, Andropov was portrayed in the West as a sensitive liberal with a fondness for Scotch whisky and the Glenn Miller sound. Now, after most of the disinformation and half-truths have been sifted out, Andropov remains an unknown quantity. What is clear is that his rise to power has coincided with the gradual evolution of the Soviet Union...
...been warned of ideological "deviations" and reminded that their art must "help the party." Some have been singled out for more specialized treatment. Iconoclastic Historian Roy Medvedev has been officially told to "cease hostile activities" against the Soviet system. Nonconformist Writer Georgi Vladimov was threatened with criminal prosecution by KGB agents...