Andropov: A Double Take

...for Solovyov and Klepikova, it is only a matter of time before the regime becomes harsher at home and more aggressive abroad, with new squads of police rounding up convicts to perform slave labor...

...The Andropov we encounter in Zhores Medvedev's biography seems to be a totally different person...

...Was Andropov behind the invasion of Afghanistan, or was he trying to warn a deaf Brezhnev of the quagmire that lay ahead...

...That this appealed to Medvedev is hardly surprising, since Medvedev's political dissent stems from his belief that authoritarianism inhibits scientific progress...

...Don't we have to agree with Medvedev when he argues that Soviet belligerence must at least partly be attributed to U.S...

...Finally, he deplores the drives of this past year to instill discipline in workers to distract them from basic reforms that might open up the system and genuinely move its citizens to perform better than the minimal norms...

...However, the reader must remember that both biographies are largely fiction, as the authors concede in refusing to identify sources, reconstructing the minutes of secret sessions of the Politburo, and claiming to have divined the truth from inside rumors...

...vasion through his henchmen, Mikhail Suslov and Anastas Mikoyan...

...Two new biographies of Yuri Andropov conjure up a similar image of Soviet power concentrated in one person whose decisions could have saved the passengers on Korean Air Lines Flight 007...

...In contrast, Medvedev finds Andropov holding the line against the Stalinists, muting nationalism by appointing non-Russians such as the Moslem Geidar Aliyev to the Politburo and the deputy premiership, and trying to counter Western military threats...

...Solovyov and Klepikova often allow their journalistic flair and emigre bitterness to overcome their objectivity...

...As a first step, we would do well to abandon the militaristic diatribes between the superpowers in favor of diplomatic exchanges, including a summit at which the real Andropov might emerge...

...provocation...

...On this crucial point, the evidence is obviously insufficient...

...But just as America's adventures in the Caribbean are the products of history, ideology, and the "security managers" who determine the options offered to the President, so the voice emanating from the Kremlin echoes the collective chorus of Communist Party, government, and military elites whose outlook is shaped by their perception of hostile forces ranged against them...

...14.95...

...The authors also acknowledge that Andropov has for years been operating a propaganda mill to grind out the moderate image that would tally best with the optimistic fantasies of Soviet intellectuals and Western observers...

...Zhores's favorable bias was engendered in 1963, he says, when he learned that Andropov had been discreetly undermining the power of the charlatan followers of Trofim Lysenko in order to revive Mendelian genetics...

...Of the two Andropovs, the evil genius of Solovyov and Klepikova appears more convincing than the "strong but just man" of Medvedev, who would like us to see in Andropov perhaps the "most reform-minded" of current Soviet leaders...

...He presides over a "police state," and is limited only by old age and progressive diabetes...

...Neither book finds grounds to foresee a basic change of the system, even as they both agree on the endemic corruption that marked the Brezhnev era...

...Solovyov and Klepikova portray this "gendarme in a dinner jacket" as the epitome of intrigue and ruthlessness...

...In reviewing Andropov's career in the KGB, he concludes that "nobody can prove his personal responsibility for excesses...

...They identify every loser in the power struggles of the past generation as a victim of Andropov's intrigues, and all the eventual winners as his creatures...

...He endeared himself to the people and to his colleagues as the incorruptible strong leader who could inspire them by his example...

...Finally, are Solovyov and Klepikova correct in painting Andropov as a believer in "Stalinism without Stalin," espousing a foreign policy based on "expand or collapse...

...Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepi-kova's Andropov appears shorn of any roots in the society, devoid of any philosophy except a crude Machiavellian drive that has propelled him to the apex of power over the corpses of his rivals...

...For Medvedev, things could have been worse...

...Though there was repression, he also points to the "comparative leniency towards dissent" in the 1970s when 260,000 Jews and thousands of others were allowed to emigrate...

...Yet Medvedev reminds us that, given the overlapping and complex set of bureaucracies, some of the provincial contests were fought over real, not spurious, issues, and that the KGB's powers, though formidable, were checked at every stage by the Communist Party...

...Unlike the bad cop of Solovyov and Klepikova, who earned his promotion by butchering the freedom fighters of Hungary in 1956, this Andropov is a good cop who played only a minor role in Budapest, trying to avert bloodshed before Nikita Khrushchev directed the inHarvey Fireside, author of "Soviet Psycho-prisons, " teaches politics at Ithaca College...

...Still, Medvedev does show clarity and even-handedness in his biography...

...And in Andropov's tirades against dissenters as "foreign agents" or as mere criminals who should be forced "to understand reality," Medvedev detects the odor of demagogy...

...by Harvey Fireside The snapshot from the Cold War of President Reagan in dressing gown and slippers ordering the invasion of Grenada dramatizes the role of individual leaders in today's turbulent world...

...Indeed, Solovyov and Klepikova accuse Zhores Medvedev's twin brother Roy of having been a key figure in the campaign to turn Andropov into a "closet liberal...

...For the famous biologist Medvedev, Andropov's rise to the top is based on his evident intelligence, honesty, and efficiency...

...Medvedev sees the portents of economic growth in administrative changes that may improve industry and agriculture as they have already reformed the transport system...

...Readers will have to decide for themselves how much credit to give Andropov for merely stabilizing the population of the prison camps and psychiatric hospitals rather than giving his more Stalinist associates free rein...

...Solovyov and Klepikova argue that Andropov has been abetting the cause of Russian nationalists and anti-Semites, as well as undermining the policy of detente...

...The seductive vision of an "evil empire" ruled by a brutal leader lets us feel self-righteousness, but surely we must resist this illusion if we are to escape the deadly arms race in which both societies are entrapped...

...After fifteen years of commanding the KGB, he was able to achieve what no other chief of the secret police could capture before him: supreme command of the system...