Andropov - Assessments
In order to evaluate these facts in the characterization of Andropov, one must take into account the following: the determining pressure of Brezhnev, Gromyko, and Ustinov; the complexity of the situation and the absence of any other way out of the situation that allowed these countries to remain in the Soviet geopolitical zone of influence.
Andropov himself with age became more conservative due to the evolution of his views and psychology in the conditions of Brezhnev's authoritarian political regime. Finally, it should be noted that the intervention of superpowers in the affairs of the satellite countries was the norm of that time, to which there are examples from the US foreign policy that controlled South America, part of Asia. The West and the East were on opposite sides of the barricades, and if one superpower lost an ally, the other superpower immediately acquired it. Was it possible in these circumstances to expect that the chairman of the KGB, Andropov, would oppose the establishment of order in the "rebellious" countries?
There are different estimates of the KGB activities and, in particular, Andropov as chairman. However, it is certain that all the advantages and disadvantages of the Soviet secret service, as in a mirror, reflected the situation in which the Soviet Union existed.
The inability of the top leadership of the CPSU to solve acute and vital problems in a timely manner led to an economic backwardness of the country from the developed countries of the West. The growth and aggravation of contradictions in the socio-economic and political spheres, the misunderstanding by the leadership of the country of their predominantly domestic nature and severity, the threats they engendered, caused primarily by external circumstances, violence over objective laws of economic development could not but affect the effectiveness of the functioning of the mechanism of state-party authorities and all its institutions, including the KGB.
Delivering a historical verdict Yu.V. Andropov, the first steps towards the country's withdrawal from the state of "stagnation" were made at the beginning of the eighties precisely by him, when in November 1982 Andropov became General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee.
A very instructive assessment of the KGB and its chairman is set forth by Academician A.D. Sakharov in the analytical article "The Imminence of Perestroika": "The dissidents in the 70's and 80's," the academician considered, "were severely persecuted, many of them spent many years in prisons, camps and psychiatric hospitals ... To be fair, it must be said that the scale political repressions in the years of "stagnation" was incomparably less than Stalin's ... On the other hand, it was the KGB that, due to its elitism, was almost the only force not affected by corruption and therefore opposed to the mafia.This duality was reflected in personal fate and position p the leader of the KGB Yu.V. Andropov.He became the head of state, he continued to fight corruption and crime, but did not take any other steps in overcoming the negative phenomena of the era of "stagnation."
Researchers have a different view of Andropov's reform potential. Some believe that for serious transformations, history simply did not let it go. Others believe that he did not even think about profound reforms. One thing is certain - it was a solid and strong personality, bearing the stamp of its time.
The KGB center of his interests was the First Main Directorate, where he had his office in Yasenevo, and in the CCGT - illegal intelligence, where he was on the party account. The destruction of everything in the country connected with Shelepin and Semichastny was done by Andropov not on his own initiative and not on an innate tendency to betrayal.
Sergey Grigoryants wrote that "... the Soviet program for the tracking by all KGB residents in NATO countries of a sudden Western nuclear missile attack (RIAN) apparently directed from Andropov to the Soviet Union. It's funny that this maniacal tracking project and the weekly mandatory report to Moscow of the number of windows lit in the evenings in the service buildings of European countries, Canada and the United States, the amount of donated blood donated, the number of military servicemen's holidays and the like of preparing a surprise attack ... similar to the "ram's plan" [undoubtedly known Andropov] of the chief of the General Staff of the USSR, General Golikov in 1941 - one of those that made Stalin not believe a lot of warnings about the date of the attack of Germany. Golikov decided himself and convinced Stalin that, that before the offensive against the Soviet Union, Germany would begin to order a huge amount of sheepskin coats for soldiers. It was the sheepskins that were unsuccessfully tracked by Soviet scouts. But the Barbarossa plan was a blitzkrieg project and was not designed for the war in the winter. That is, Andropov, expecting, like Stalin, a sudden military aggression, repeated quite well in military circles the well-known, but utterly forgotten mistake of Stalin, which led to a catastrophe in the first months of the war.
"Summarizing the political life of Yuri Andropov, it must be said that he was the main destroyer of the Soviet Union and those mutilated, but seemingly assembled, and so spread the influence of the remnants of the Russian empire in the world. Like Stalin and Khrushchev, he was far from being able to implement everything, but, unlike his predecessors, he managed not so much to formulate his plans, as to lay the foundations, as now commonly believed, of their unsuccessful successors."
Evaluation of Andropov's activities remains the subject of numerous discussions in Russia and other countries, both among scientists and popular authors. It is still in the focus of documentary films and popular science films. As the head of the KGB, Andropov was a ruthless fighter against dissent. Journalist David Remnik, who made reviews on the Soviet Union for the Washington Post in the 1980s, called Andropov "an animal" and a "deeply corrupt person." Alexander Yakovlev, who later became Mikhail Gorbachev's adviser and ideologist of perestroika, said that: "Andropov was the most dangerous of all of them, simply because he was smarter than the rest." However, it was Andropov who returned Yakovlev to a high position in Moscow in 1983 after a ten-year "expulsion" by the ambassador to Canada, caused by his sharp attack on "Russian chauvinism." Yakovlev was a close colleague of Andropov's KGB-related general Yevgeny Primakov , later prime minister of Russia. Andropov began to replace older Soviet bureaucrats much more young.
According to Jonah Mihai Pacepa, the fugitive General Securitate (Romanian secret police): "In the West, if Andropov is generally remembered, then for his brutal suppression of dissent in the USSR and for his role in defeating the Prague Spring of 1968. And the head of the intelligence services of the former Warsaw Pact , when I was one of them, saw in Andropov a man in whom the KGB replaced the Communist Party in the management of the Soviet Union, and who laid the foundation for a new era of communist fraudulent operations with the aim of improving the greatly shaken image of Soviet rulers in the West."
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
