During the height of the crisis, Andropov operated out of the Soviet Embassy in Budapest, along with Moscow representatives, Anastas Mikoyan and Suslov. These three men, along with Marshall Georgii Zhukov, handled the Soviet response, advising Hungarian Communists and eventually directing Soviet troops. During the crisis, as divisions sapped Communist unity, and the Prime Minister Imre Nagy increasingly capitulated to rightwing pressure, Andropov apparently persuaded the popular Communist Janos Kadar to take over the leadership of the Hungarian party. In the following two decades, Kadar became the most reform-minded leader in Eastern Europe. He introduced decentralization, profit-sharing, and cooperative farms, allowed various kinds of private enterprise, and re-established popular confidence in the Communist Party. How Andropov, who left Hungary in March 1957, assessed the Hungarian reforms remained a mystery. Nonetheless, during the crisis itself, Andropov’s wisdom in favoring Kadar and his coolness under fire apparently increased Suslov’s admiration of Andropov.112
After Hungary, Andropov handled other tough assignments. In 1963, he joined a delegation headed by Suslov that engaged in tense negotiations with the Chinese in an unsuccessful attempt to heal the recent breach between the Chinese and Soviet parties. Later, as head of the KGB, Andropov took responsibility for the crackdown on dissident intellectuals, like Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Andropov’s willingness to defend these actions openly and to withstand the criticism of Western commentators and such Soviet intellectuals as Yevgeny Yevushenko, strongly suggested that Andropov would have avoided Gorbachev’s blunder of turning the media over to anti-socialist elements. As head of the KGB, Andropov also showed courage and conviction by investigating corruption in high places. On his KGB watch, the entire Party Presidium and government of Azerbaijan were dismissed for corruption, bribery, and embezzlement. Moreover, in 1981, Andropov’s deputy exposed and arrested some of the “black market-ridden dolce vita crowd” that included Brezhnev’s daughter and son-in-law. Even investigating crime in the General Secretary’s family did not daunt Andropov.113
Andropov had other equally impressive personal characteristics. Though his formal education did not go beyond some work at the Rybinsk technical school and the Higher Party School, Andropov unquestionably possessed a first class mind, informed by wide reading and broad cultural tastes. While Ambassador to Hungary, he learned Hungarian and studied the history and culture of Hungary, feats that endeared him to his hosts. Through his daughters, Irina, who was married to a famous actor of the Moscow theater, Alexander Filipov, and a second daughter, who was an assistant editor of a music magazine, Andropov had links to the world of artists and entertainers. He learned English, read American newspapers, magazines, and novels, and liked Glenn Miller and Miles Davis. In travel, while Gorbachev preferred the West, Andropov confined his visits to socialist countries — Hungary, Vietnam, North Korea, Outer Mongolia, Yugoslavia, China, and Albania. In habits and demeanor, Andropov inspired confidence. He was quiet, well-spoken, calm, controlled, and sincere. Moreover, under Brezhnev, when old age, infirmity, and laxness eroded “Leninist norms” among many at the top, Andropov lived modestly and gained a reputation as a workaholic.114
Communists took hope in Andropov’s grasp of the problems, his ideas for reform, and his decisive implementation of changes. The American scholar, Stephen Cohen, said that Andropov was the “most reform-minded” of Brezhnev’s Politburo and the only PB member that the orthodox Communists trusted to handle reform wisely.115 Yegor Ligachev said, “Andropov possessed the rare, true leader’s gift of translating general tasks into the language of concrete jobs.” Ligachev said that Andropov had “a clear vision of the prospects of the country’s development,” and unlike Gorbachev, he “disliked improvisation and hit-or-miss approaches.” At the same time, Andropov “planned the renewal of socialism, understanding that it needed some deep, qualitative changes.”116
Andropov’s analysis of the Soviet Union’s problems and his policy proposals occurred in three speeches that he delivered to the Central Committee in November and December 1982 and June 1983, and in an article he wrote in 1983 to mark the centenary of Marx’s death. Unsurprisingly, Andropov concentrated on economic problems. The year 1982 not only set the worst record in Soviet history for labor productivity and economic growth, but also represented the fourth year in a row of poor harvests.117 In his first address to the Central Committee as General Secretary, Andropov laid out a plan of reform that would guide his short tenure in office. Entitled “The Better We Work, the Better We Will Live,” the speech outlined the main economic problems facing the country: inefficiency, waste, poor productivity, a lack of labor discipline, slow growth in living standards, and an insufficient quantity and quality of some consumer goods and services—particularly in housing, health care, and food. In defining the problem of consumer goods, Andropov distinguished his approach from Khrushchev’s. Andropov stressed that the living standards did not reduce themselves to simple competition with the West for greater incomes and more material things. Rather, socialist living standards meant much more: “the growth of the consciousness and cultural level,” “reasonable consumption,” “a rational diet,” quality public services, and “a morally and aesthetically adequate use of free time.”118
According to Andropov, poor planning and outmoded management, the failure to utilize scientific and technological innovations, reliance on extensive rather than intensive methods of production, and the lack of labor discipline caused the economic shortcomings. Andropov called for the “acceleration [uskorenie] of scientific and technological progress.” Andropov visualized a modernization of production through the application of computer technology. Beyond this, he called for standing commissions on energy that would correct the “uneconomical use of resources.”119
Andropov also advocated attacking the economic problems by “a radical improvement of planning and management” at the top of Soviet society and by an improvement of discipline and incentives at the bottom.120 In many cases, management needed to become smaller and simpler.121 Andropov recognized that current planning and management methods often discouraged efficiency and the introduction of computers, robots, and flexible technology, since the adoption of new production methods could delay the fulfillment of an industry’s plan. A change in “planning methods” and “material incentives” had to insure “that those who boldly introduce new technology do not find themselves at a disadvantage.”122 Andropov acknowledged that some experts thought that the economic problems occurred because of too much centralization and that a solution demanded granting greater independence to enterprises and collective and state farms. From personal experience, with decentralization under Khrushchev and Kadar, Andropov knew that it could lead to parochialism and inequality. Andropov did not reject decentralization outright, but he opposed the course Gorbachev would later embrace, a rash plunge into decentralization. Rather, Andropov said it was necessary “to act with circumspection, to experiment if need be, and to weigh and consider the experience of fraternal countries.” Most importantly, any extension of independence must be combined with “greater responsibility and with concern for the interests of the entire people.”123