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

Judson Mitchell claims that the Central Committee meeting which elected Andropov as General Secretary, was little more than a rubber stamp meeting.

Andropov was in a good position to take over the control of the party apparatus ; three big system hierarchs, Brezhnev, Kosygin and Suslov had all died.

At this point, Western experts believed that Andropov was grooming Gorbachev as his successor.

At 71, Konstantin Chernenko was in poor health, suffering from emphysema, and unable to play an active role in policy making when he was chosen, after lengthy discussion, to succeed Andropov.

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.

Chernenko was then elected to replace Andropov, despite concerns over his own ailing health, and against Andropov's wishes ( he stated he wanted Gorbachev to succeed him ).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Andropov was the son of a railway official Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov, who was a member of a Armenian noble family.

Andropov was educated at the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical College.

During the Prague Spring events in Czechoslovakia, Andropov was the main proponent of the " extreme measures ".

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

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 ".

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.

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

Upon the deaths of Leonid Brezhnev ( 1982 ), Yuri Andropov ( 1984 ) and Konstantin Chernenko ( 1985 ), Kuznetzov became acting chairman of the Presidiumthe Soviet Union's acting head of state.

With little deviations, the described protocol was roughly the same for the state funerals of Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.

In Russia, during the time of the Soviet Union ( 1917 – 1991 ), the state funerals of the most senior political and military leaders such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko all followed the same basic outline.

* 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.

" 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.

* 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.

* 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.

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.

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.