Climbing the Kremlin Wall

By Patricia Blake

ANDROPOV by Zhores A. Medvedev; Norton; 227pages; $14.95

The world knew very little about former KGB Chief Yuri Andropov when ic succeeded Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Soviet Union's Communist Party last November. Almost immediately, a gaggle of professional and amateur Kremlinologists scrambled to fill the information gap. Thus far all but one of their books have been either disappointingly speculative or based on stale data. The exception is this lively and provocative portrait by Zhores Medvedev, an exiled Soviet scientist living in London. Medvedev, 57, relied in part on the scholarly skills and resources of his twin brother, Roy Medvedev, who has remained in Moscow and is the author of Let History Judge (1972), a monumental but unofficial account of the Stalin era. Roy Medvedev was threatened with imprisonment last January for continuing his research and writing.

Zhores Medvedev portrays Andropov as an austere, highly intelligent operator whose key weapon in his battle for Kremlin supremacy was the KGB he headed for 15 years. Andropov and his supporters relied on the intelligence agency to discredit the ailing Brezhnev, his family and network of associates. The Andropov aim was to pressure Brezhnev into resigning while besmirching potential rivals from the party chiefs camp.

Medvedev offers some compelling particulars. In early 1982, he says, Andropov ordered the KGB to arrest two close friends of Brezhnev's daughter Galina for diamond smuggling. News of the arrests was leaked to the Western press, and Galina was dispatched to the Kremlin hospital, supposedly because of a "nervous breakdown." According to the author, Brezhnev's doubly distraught daughter attended her father's funeral in the company of two well-dressed secret policemen, who appeared to be members of the family. The funeral was televised live, Medvedev explains, and the KGB was afraid that Galina might cause a scandal by doing something untoward.

Brezhnev's personal reputation was further compromised when, as a result of KGB investigations, several old cronies of his were dismissed from high positions on charges of corruption. Then, two months before his death, an invidious attempt was made to display the leader as physically and mentally incompetent. On a scheduled nationwide television broadcast, says

Medvedev, an aide, A.M.Alexandrov-Agentov, gave Brezhnev the wrong speech to read. After seven minutes, the aide interrupted his boss and put another text in front of him. Brezhnev looked puzzled, then lamely told his television audience: "It was not my fault. I have to start all over again now." The rest of the speech was read by an announcer. Writes Medvedev: "An error of this kind was unprecedented, and was inexcusable for an aide, who would certainly expect immediate dismissal." Although all of Brezhnev's aides lost their positions after his death, Alexandrov-Agentov was kept on as an assistant to Andropov.

According to Medvedev's unofficial sources in the Soviet Union, supporters of Brezhnev's hand-picked successor, Konstantin Chernenko, counterattacked by floating a rumor that Andropov was not Russian but half Armenian and a quarter Jewish. Since Stalin's death there has been an unwritten Kremlin rule that the party chief must be an ethnic Russian. In Medvedev's view, the tactics used by Chernenko's supporters were mere pinpricks to Andropov, who had gained the crucial support in the Politburo of Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov.

Medvedev's description of Brezhnev's funeral rites contains some wondrously macabre details. When the overweight leader's body was placed in its coffin at Moscow's Hall of Trade Unions, the bottom of the shoddily made box collapsed, and the body fell to the floor. A new, metal-reinforced casket was later taken to the burial site on Red Square, where it was supposed to be reverently lowered into an open grave. What actually happened remained unexplained to the millions of Soviet citizens watching the televised interment. The coffin proved too heavy for the two funeral attendants who were holding it, and it tumbled into its last resting place with a loud crash.

Since then, Andropov has barely mentioned his predecessor. Meanwhile, his much touted drive against corruption has continued to target Brezhnev's old pals, including General Nikolai Shchelokov, the former Minister of Internal Affairs. But the anticorruption campaign has affected too many highly placed officials, Medvedev notes, and Andropov's policy has met with powerful resistance. As a result, the drive has recently been toned down.

Medvedev argues that Andropov, for all his shrewdness, remains beholden to the old, entrenched bureaucracy. Now 69, he has "waited for supreme power for too long," says Medvedev. "If he wants to make his mark on history, he must move faster than his predecessors." Andropov's recent track record, Medvedev observes, indicates that he is capable of quick action in foreign policy but has repeatedly gone into reverse when it comes to meeting his people's main desire for "at least a moderate level of political democracy."

Excerpt

To the general public in the Soviet Union .. . Andropov's election was unexpected. His KGB background was not an encouraging omen [and his] election met with no enthusiasm. The first gloomy anecdote to circulate was probably an accurate reflection of the general feeling: Andropov explains to a foreign journalist that he is sure the people will follow him. 'And those who don't follow me, will follow Brezhnev.' A later anecdote maintains that the Kremlin will probably be renamed -- the Andropolis.

--By Patricia Blake This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.