Andropov, Yuri 1914-84
Soviet politician

Born in the village of Nagutskoye in Stavropol province of the North Caucasus region of southern Russia, the son of a railway official, he trained as a water transport engineer and began work in the shipyards of the upper Volga, at Rybinsk (renamed Andropov from 1984 to 1991), in 1930. Here he became politically active and in 1940 was given the task of 'sovietizing' the newly ceded Karelian peninsula, but, within a year, after its occupation by Germany, he was engaged in organizing a partisan resistance movement. After World War II he made rapid progress, being promoted to the post of Second Party Secretary in Karelia, and was then brought to Moscow to work for the Communist Party central committee. He was ambassador in Budapest, 1954-57, where he came to the notice of the strict ideologist, Mikhail Suslov, for his part in crushing the Hungarian uprising of 1956. He was appointed head of the KGB (1967-82) and, in 1973, became a full member of the politburo. His firm handling of dissident movements while he was at the KGB enhanced his reputation, enabling him to be chosen as General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev's successor in 1973. In this post he proved to be more radical and reformist than his previous record would have suggested, but he died after less than 15 months in office. During that time he had successfully groomed a group of potential successors, one of whom was Mikhail Gorbachev.

Bibliography: Zhores Medvedev, Andropov (1983)