WHO IS YURI ANDROPOV?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170054-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 1, 2010
• Sequence Number: 54
• Publication Date: May 27, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/01: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170054-5
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE
Jerry FJHo1gh.
THE WASHINGTON POST
27 May 1982
iirx Andropow: : .
The selection 'of Yuri Andro ov as Cenral Committee secretary is 't'w'o--:one l o n ' '
p rY -for the International Department and one for the Socialist
one of the most favorable- developments to have occurred in the :Countries Department. The Kuusinen group essentially was given to.
Soviet Union in recent years. It is yet another strong piece of evidence! the,$ocialist Countries Department, that is, to Andropov. Andropov
that the Soviet succession will bring significant reform fairly quickly soon replaced Burlatsky as its head with another of its members,;
rather than after a long transitional period. Ueorg3 Arbatov, now the director of the Institute of the U.S.A. and
Andropov, chairman of the KGB for 14 years, is primarily known '. Canada
in the West as head of the secret police' which has been subpressrng Arbatov continued in this. post, until 1967, The group included a
disiidents.,That is an important part of his responsibilities and of his number ,of important reformist intellectuals--, notably Alexander
personality- He has recently, spoken out forcefully against'a multi- ,.Bovilt, h ow the Izvestia columnist, and Oleg- Bogomolov, the director
party system,, and, as a national leader, he'would likely be as harsh'on ; oftheinstitute that studies East European economic reform.. the dissidents as Leonid Brezhnev. - {Na leader accepts 'Al the Ideas of his advisers, but Andropov surely
Yet the degree of success of the dissidents is not the whole storyof was: aware- of Arbatov's-public role of pushing detente since 1954
the evolution of Soviet society. If we focus upon political struggles when he selected him as his chief long-term adviser.:'
and trends-within the Soviet Communist Party, Andropov is an ex . Andropov's most recent speech, on the anniversary of Lenin's
trernely kiteresting figure.' birthday; suggested that he is still thinking in these terms. Its two
Two facts-are crucial. First, the KGB has foreign intelligence and:; .,major themes were the creative nature of Marxism-Leninism (a code--j
foreign policy responsibilities as well as internal security ones. Andro- :.word for the need to modify it) and the absolutely central character of.;
pov's background suggests he was chosen predominantly for the first the question. of peace and war. Andropov was forthright in stating',
,set. For the 14 years before becoming KGB chief, Andropov worked. that the Soviet Union must get on with solving its own problems.'
in the foreign policy realm. From 1953 to 1957, he was ambassador to -.,; . Andropov is probably now the heir, apparent, and, if this is the
Hungary, and from 1957 to 1967 head of the Socialist Countries De case, Arbatov may become his national security adviser. But all of the
partment of the Central Committee. ..:..candidates have weaknesses in their background, and the new leader-
The ?';
key deputy chairmen of the KGB for internal security-were'? ship is likely to be collective and to resemble that of 1953-1957 in
B:ezlu:e.' cronies, and Androprov cannot have had much control over: which important reform occured; including a limitation on the growth'
thoin. He surely spent much of 1:ia time in-the KGB's foreign_policy in military budgets. The Reagan administration should be prepared
realms. , to respond.
B.cau;e of his ambassadorship in Hungary, hemust-have remained "
the leadership's special expert on that country, and it is difficult tor: ? . The writer is a professor of political science at Duke Uni-
int Sgine the Soviet Union tolerating and increasingly approving the versa and a staff mem6er of the Brooki
focnrs that have been carried out in Hungary if Andropov had: not Brookings histetution
been p:;' hing that line,.
The second key fact about Andropov is that he is a protegeof Otto
Kuusinerr, the old Soviet leader of Finnish extraction. From 1940
1 0,51, Andropov did Komsomol and party work in the Karelo~Finnish ?
republic under Kuusinen,.who, as he rose in influence 'in the .Khru
siuhev period, took Andropov with him..-
Kuusinen is known in the West as the-rlan Stalin tried to instates
Communist leader in Finland during the Soviet-Finnish War of 19:39-
51 O. But within the Soviet Union he was-an important reformist fig-
ure. As Comintern secretary in 19:34, he argued against Stalin in favor
of the establishment of the Popular Front against Hitler. In 1945-
1946, under- the pseudonym -of "N. Baltiisky," he wrote- favorably
about West European socialists at a time when this suggested
detente, and in one remarkable article in 1945 he even seemed to ad-
vocate, in an Aesopian way, independence for Poland.
Once Stalin died, Kuusinen became an important-adviser iit;Mus=
cow, and in 1957 he was named a Central Committee secretary and a
full member of the Presidium. '
Essentially Kuusinen was a reformist, non-dogmatic ideologist,
who served as a counterpoint to the more conservative Mikhail Su-
slov. To heed his full-time "group of consultants, "he,chose the-30=
year-old Fedor Burlatsky, an intellectual who had been the inost out-
.,poicen advocate of democratization and de-Stalinization the
Soviet media in 11964-57.
When Kuusinen died, the group of consultan s was Jiv'sded into
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/01: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170054-5