After they had gone, Andropov remained alone with Kryuchkov and told him that he wished health and success to all the friends.

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.

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.

Andropov fought hard for Soviet intervention, telling Leonid Brezhnev that Amin's policies had destroyed the military and the government's capability to handle the crisis by use of mass repression.

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.

The lightly dressed Andropov had become tired, and had taken a rest on a granite bench in the shade ; his body became thoroughly chilled, and he soon began shivering uncontrollably.

Alexander Yakovlev, later an advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev and the ideologist of perestroika, said " In a way I always thought Andropov was the most dangerous of all of them, simply because he was smarter than the rest.

After lavish eulogies were read by Soviet leader Yuri Andropov and Politburo member Viktor Grishin, his ashes laid to rest in the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

For the last two months of his life Andropov did not get out of bed, except when he was lifted onto a couch while his sheets were changed.

He was unable to write properly during his later life ; when asked by Andropov to write a letter of resignation in 1982, he was unable to do so.

After that, Brezhnev approved the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 ( Prague Spring ) and ended with the Soviet war in Afghanistan which continued after his death ; he installed an authoritarian regime that lasted throughout his life and the lives of his two successors, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.

* 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.

Andropov was elected the party's General Secretary on 12 November 1982 by a decision of the Central Committee.

Even so, by the time he had succeeded in dominating the Central Committee, Andropov fell ill.

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

He was appointed following lobbying made by the Soviets, most notable among them was Yuri Andropov, the KGB Chairman.

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.

* 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.

On November 10, 1982 Leonid Brezhnev died and was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, the former head of the KGB.

On February 9, 1984 Andropov died and was succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko who in turn died on March 10, 1985.

However his message was destroyed because it contradicted the conspiracy theory fabricated by Andropov.

During his rule, Andropov attempted to improve the economy by raising management effectiveness without changing the principles of socialist economy.

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.

According to the Soviet medical report, Andropov suffered from several medical conditions: interstitial nephritis, nephrosclerosis, residual hypertension and diabetes, which were worsened by chronic kidney deficiency.

He was succeeded in office by Konstantin Chernenko, who was destined to serve even less time in office ( 13 months ) than Andropov did before his death in office.

Andropov, " a throwback to a tradition of Leninist asceticism ", was appalled by the corruption during Brezhnev's regime, and ordered investigations and arrests of the most flagrant abusers.

* The KGB's 1967 Annual Report, signed by Andropov by CNN

Tretyakov says that from 1979 the KGB wanted to prevent the United States from deploying the missiles in Western Europe and that, directed by Yuri Andropov, they distributed disinformation, based on a faked " doomsday report " by the Soviet Academy of Sciences about the effect of nuclear war on climate, to peace groups, the environmental movement and the journal AMBIO.

Andropov had been the Soviet Ambassador to Hungary during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and began his tenure as Soviet leader by strengthening the powers of the KGB, and by suppressing dissidents.