ently convinced Andropov that Moscow had to be especially vigi-
lant about intellectual dissent.
The Soviet leadership gave Andropov high marks for his role in
defeating the Hungarian revolution, and he was promoted to chief of
the Central Committee’s Department for Liaison with Socialist
States. During the Khrushchevyears, Andropov had a public repu-
tation as a liberal and an anti-Stalinist. He cultivated close relations
with Hungarian communist party chief Janos Kadar, whom he had
helped install in 1956. Andropov was admired by members of his
staff as an open and cultured man who accepted some measure of ide-
ological diversity within the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc. In
1967 he was picked to head the KGB by Leonid Brezhnev, to re-
placeVladimir Semichastniy, and Andropov quickly took on the
persona of a Chekist.
Under Andropov’s 15-year tutelage, the KGB’s foreign and do-
mestic missions expanded: his enemies were ideological dissent and
corruption, both of which he insisted were to be prosecuted fiercely.
He pushed the establishment of the Fifth Directorate within the KGB
with responsibility for “counterintelligence among the intelli-
gentsia.” The new component intensified surveillance of dissidents
and took an active role in persecuting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and
Andrei Sakharov, the latter of whom he referred to as “public en-
emy number one.” Andropov repeatedly warned the Politburo of the
threat of dissent. In January 1974, he urged Solzhenitsyn’s immedi-
ate deportation, because The Gulag Archipelago“is not a work of
creative literature, but a political document. This is dangerous. We
have in this country hundreds of thousands of hostile elements.”
Andropov also expanded the role of the KGB in combating cor-
ruption within the economy and the police. KGB officials brought
thousands of cases against men and women for “specially dangerous
state crimes,” sending many to their deaths. Yet the KGB was for-
bidden by Brezhnev from inspecting corruption within the provincial
or national leadership of the Communist Party. Andropov apparently
covertly kept a record of leading malefactors in the leadership, which
he would later use to purge the party.
As a manager of foreign intelligence, he left much of the work in
the hands of the KGB’s First Chief Directorate. He selected
Vladimir Kryuchkovto head the component, an appointment thatANDROPOV, YURI VLADIMIROVICH (1914–1984) •1106-313 A-G.qxd 7/27/06 7:54 AM Page 11