Andropov said that " It is time they stopped ... search for the best ways of unleashing nuclear war ...

To make matters worse for Chernenko, he did not have control over the Politburo ; both Andrei Gromyko and Dmitriy Ustinov were both very independent politically, and the Politburo still contained several leading Andropov protégés, such as Gorbachev, Vorotnikov, Solomontsev and Heydar Aliyev.

After Brezhnev's death in November 1982, there was speculation the position of General Secretary would fall to Chernenko, however he was unable to rally enough popular support for his candidacy within the Party, and the posting fell to former KGB chief Yuri Andropov.

Arkady Volsky, an aide to Andropov and other general secretaries, recounts an episode that occurred after a Politburo meeting on the day following Andropov's demise: As Politburo members filed out of the conference hall, either Andrei Gromyko or ( in later accounts ) Dmitriy Ustinov is said to have put his arm round Nikolai Tikhonov's shoulders and said: " It's okay, Kostya is an agreeable guy ( pokladisty muzhik ), one can do business with him ...." The Politburo failed to pass the decision for Gorbachev, who was nominally Chernenko's second in command, to run the meetings of the Politburo itself in the absence of Chernenko ; the latter due to his declining health, began to miss those meetings with increasing frequency.

* August 25 – Samantha Smith, " Goodwill Ambassador " between the Soviet Union and the United States for writing a letter to Yuri Andropov about nuclear war, and eventually visiting the Soviet Union at Andropov's request, dies in the Bar Harbor Airlines Flight 1808 plane crash.

Andropov remained haunted for the rest of his life by the speed with which an apparently all-powerful Communist one-party state had begun to topple.

In 1957, Andropov returned to Moscow from Budapest in order to head the Department for Liaison with Communist and Workers ' Parties in Socialist Countries, a position he held until 1967.

Andropov aimed to achieve " the destruction of dissent in all its forms " and always insisted that " the struggle for human rights was a part of a wide-ranging imperialist plot to undermine the foundation of the Soviet state ".

In 1968, Andropov as the KGB Chairman issued his order “ On the tasks of State security agencies in combating the ideological sabotage by the adversary ”, calling for struggle against dissidents and their imperialist masters.

The proposal by Andropov to use psychiatry for struggle against dissidents was implemented.

Andropov was the longest-serving KGB chairman and did not resign as head of the KGB until May 1982, when he was again promoted to the Secretariat to succeed the late Mikhail Suslov as secretary responsible for ideological affairs.

In foreign policy, the war continued in Afghanistan, although Andropov — who felt the invasion might have been a mistake — did half-heartedly explore options for a negotiated withdrawal.

Andropov was encouraged to state that the Soviet Union engaged in the deception that they too were looking for KAL 007 and the black box.

In his memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev recalled that when Andropov was the leader, he and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the chairman of Gosplan, asked Andropov for access to real budget figures.

On 31 December 1983 Andropov celebrated the New Year for the last time.

As KGB head, Andropov was ruthless against dissent, and author David Remnick, who covered the Soviet Union for the Washington Post in the 1980s, called Andropov " profoundly corrupt, a beast ".

:" In the West, if Andropov is remembered at all, it is for his brutal suppression of political dissidence at home and for his role in planning the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia.

By contrast, the leaders of the former Warsaw Pact intelligence community, when I was one of them, looked up to Andropov as the man who substituted the KGB for the Communist party in governing the Soviet Union, and who was the godfather of Russia's new era of deception operations aimed at improving the badly damaged image of Soviet rulers in the West.

The Western media favored Andropov because of his supposed passion for Western music and scotch.

After the elections, the KGB director Yuri Andropov obtained permission for additional money and other resources from the Central Committee of the CPSU to ensure an Allende victory in Congress.

Andropov declared, " the struggle for human rights was a part of a wide-ranging imperialist plot to undermine the foundation of the Soviet state.

* 1983 – American schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

* 1984 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

* 1984 – Yuri Andropov, Soviet politician ( b. 1914 )

A Parade of Mirrors and Reflections, a novella by Anatoly Kudryavitsky, centers on the cloning of deceased Soviet premier Yuri Andropov.

* 1983 – Cold War: Samantha Smith, a U. S. schoolgirl, flies to the Soviet Union at the invitation of Secretary General Yuri Andropov.

He became the third Soviet leader to die in less than three years, and, upon being informed in the middle of the night of his death, US President Ronald Reagan, who was seven months older than Chernenko and just over three years older than his predecessor Andropov, is reported to have remarked " how am I supposed to get any place with the Russians if they keep dying on me?

" The Soviet Succession: From Andropov to Chernenko ," World Today, 40, April 1984, 134 – 41.

Because of this he gained the attention of several leading Soviet officials, such as Yuri Andropov, Dmitriy Ustinov and Boris Ponomarev.

Within three years of the deaths of Soviet Leaders Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko, Gorbachev was elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985.

* 1982 – In the Soviet Union, Yuri Andropov becomes the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev.

* February 13 – Konstantin Chernenko succeeds the late Yuri Andropov as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

* February 9 – Yuri Andropov, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( b. 1914 )

* April 25 – Manchester, Maine, schoolgirl Samantha Smith is invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov, after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

** KGB head Yuri Andropov is appointed to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

* November 12 – In the Soviet Union, former KGB head Yuri Andropov is selected to become the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's Central Committee, succeeding the late Leonid I. Brezhnev.

Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (; – 9 February 1984 ) was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.

There are some who believe that Andropov was behind the deaths of Fyodor Kulakov and Pyotr Masherov, the two youngest members of the Soviet leadership.

During 15 months in office, Andropov dismissed 18 ministers, 37 first secretaries of obkoms, kraikoms and Central Committees of Communist Parties of Soviet Republics ; criminal cases on highest party and state officials were started.

Andropov was advised by his Defence Minister Dmitriy Ustinov and by the head of the KGB Viktor Chebrikov to keep secret the fact that the Soviet Union held in its possession the sought-after " black box " from KAL 007.

Ustinov and Andropov being the strongest proponents in the Politburo for military intervention.