By the will of fate, Andropov headed the Soviet state after the untimely death of the beloved ruler Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev.
Andropov led a great country as a very sick man and stayed at the top of power for just over a year (fourteen months).
What could have happened to the USSR, stay Andropov in power not for a year, and for five years – ten? With the current level of medical equipment, this would have happened (due to kidney disease, Andropov needed periodic blood purification
hemodialysis), but then there was no such technology in the USSR.
Many people remember those times, and after the well-known liberties of the underground guild workers, speculators and other enterprising brethren during the last years of Brezhnev's rule, with the coming to power of Andropov, the KGB and the police sharply pressed the freemen.
For big cities, during daytime working hours, special patrols checked cinemas and shops, catching tuna eaters: “Why not at work?!”.
Such external severity convinced many in the USSR among the people, that Andropov will tighten the screws, will press dodgers and embezzlers. Many people still think so..
However, very many, more familiar with the topic, talk about Andropov preparing radical reforms of the economy of the Union — he is with the team “young reformers” developed a program, which began to be implemented already in 1985 by Gorbachev and these former associates of Andropov, enshrined in their power — new economic policy, private enterprise.
Andropov planned to make a kind of Soviet United States — raise the level of the Soviet economy, turn it to face the people, allow small business. He developed a path, which then went the current China — private business plus the communist party.
There would be a collapse of the Union army, what happened under Gorbachev — unlikely, and our military would not have left Europe, and the Warsaw Pact survived, and the GDR would still exist.
Andropov would still have kept the Union from disintegrating, but his plans were carried out by other people, with other thoughts and views…
What do you think of Andropov? It was he who gave impetus to the collapse of the USSR, or he could really improve the lives of ordinary people with his reforms? Or the country could no longer be saved by anyone in those days, everyone was intent on breaking up.?
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Alexey Nast
