Soviet Union: Rise of a Secret Policeman

The KGB's Andropov becomes a favorite to succeed Brezhnev

By midmorning, the black limousines had begun nestling side by side in front of the faded blue and green Central Committee building in Moscow. Arriving in small groups, nearly 300 members of the Communist Party's ruling body filed into the auditorium for a closed-door conclave. Ostensibly, the main object of the special meeting was to discuss a plan to increase agricultural production. But shortly after the start, Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev, 75, in his role as General Secretary of the Communist Party, made an announcement that added a new element to the most popular pastime in Moscow: speculating about who will eventually succeed the ailing leader.

Looking pale but fit, Brezhnev nominated Yuri Andropov, 67, the tall and somewhat stooped leader of the Committee for State Security (KGB), for election to the ten-man Secretariat of the Central Committee, a powerful body that runs the day-to-day affairs of the party. The Central Committee promptly elected him. Two days later, the government announced that Andropov had been relieved of his position in the KGB "because of his assignment to other duties." The promotion made Andropov one of only four contenders who hold the combination of posts thought necessary for a potential party chief: membership in both the Politburo, the 13-man council that makes all major policy decisions, and the Central Committee Secretariat. His three most prominent rivals are Economic Expert Andrei Kirilenko, 75, Administrator Konstantin Chernenko, 70, and Agricultural Specialist Mikhail Gorbachev, 51.

Andropov's elevation surprised Kremlinologists, who had ruled out his candidacy on the ground that his public image had been tarnished by 15 years of service as chief of the Soviet secret police. "It is the most important personnel appointment in decades," says William Hyland, a senior fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and one of Washington's most respected Sovietologists. The promotion of Andropov, says a Western diplomat in Moscow, shows that "he has a lot of support in the army, the Foreign Ministry and the party." According to Hyland, the Central Committee may have given Andropov some of the vast policymaking powers that were long held by Mikhail Suslov, the party ideologist whose authority was second only to Brezhnev's until Suslov's death last January. A Soviet historian agrees: "Andropov is definitely the No. 2 man now."