FILM OF PRAISE BUILDS LEGEND ON ANDROPOV

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000705870008-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: December 7, 2011
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: June 23, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705870008-0
'ARTICLE APPEARED
NEW YORK TIMES
23 June 1985
Film of Praise
Builds Legend
On Andropov
By SERGE SCHMEMANN
Special to The New York Times
MOSCOW, June 22 - The legend of
Yuri V. Andropov has gained in depth
with a new documentary film that por-
trays him as, among other things, a
man who had a fine singing voice and
wrote love poems to his wife.
Titled "Y. V. Andropov: Pages From
a Life,-- the film makes Mr. Andropov
the first Soviet leader since Lenin to
have a posthumous film made about
his life. Admiring movies were made
about Stalin, Nikita S. Khrushchev and
Leonid I. Brezhnev while they lived,
and during Konstantin U. Chernenko's
brief tenure a short movie was made
about the border-guard unit he served
in as a young draftee. Not one of these
has been seen since its subject died.
Mr. Andropov, by contrast, has be-
come something of a figure of popular
legend since his death in February
1984, despite the fact that he served as
Soviet leader for only 15 months, most
of them in deteriorating health.
Work on the film began a year ago,
on the 70th anniversary of Mr. Andro-
pov's birth, and it recently had its pre-
miere. Mr. Andropov would have been
71 on June 15.
The hourlong documentary contains
only a few live shots of Mr. Andropov.
Oleg Uralov, the director, said Mr. An-
dropov felt "embarrassed, even an-
gry" when being filmed. But using
photographs, interviews and film shot
in Mr. Andropov's limousine, offices
and residences, the work traces his life
from his birth in a remote south Rus-
sian railroad depot, though his service
in Karelia, Hungary, the K.G.B. and fi-
nally the Kremlin, with praiseful de-
tail.
There are photographs of Mr. Andro-
pov as a young Communist Youth or-
ganizer on the Volga River. His service
in the Karelian partisan movement
during the war is recalled by surviving
comrades, including a woman who re-
called his fine voice when he led his
commandos in song.
Mr. Andropov's service in Hungary
as Ambassador during the uprising and
Soviet invasion of 1956 is presented
with striking film clips of rebelling
Hungarians, including the celebrated
shots of secret policemen being execut-
ed. The film speaks of Mr. Andropov's
I courage and help, but makes no men-
tion of the Soviet tanks that rolled into
Hungary.
Mr. Andropov's 15 years of service as
head of the K.G.B. is recorded in some
remarkable footage, including his ad-
dress- to a graduating class of K.G.B.
officers and his farewell speech to sen-
ior colleagues when he left. At the lat-
ter event, the camera repeatedly scans
the faces of the senior officers.
The documentary also shows the
book-lined apartment where Mr. An-
dropov lived in Moscow, and his
wooden dacha on the high bank of the
Moskva River outside the capital. One
intriguing shot shows a handwritten
manuscript identified as Mr. Andro-
pov's memoirs, which otherwise have
not been mentioned or published.
Mr. Andropov's son, Igor, now Am-
bassador to Greece, and his widow,
Tatiana, are interviewed. His daugh-
ter, Irma, is briefly shown at home.
Mrs. Andropov, who is apparently
physically disabled, tells how she met
her husband at a Communist Youth
gathering where he sang, then led her
away to read his poems to her.
The narration fades into a later poem
Mr. Andropov wrote to his wife as
photographs of the couple through the
years rotate on the screen:
I wrote and thought, my dear,
That now at 50, as at 25,
Even when my head is almost gray,
I once again write verses to you.
0, let them laugh at the poet,
And let them be doubly jealous at
this,
That I write sonnets for my own and
not another's wife.
My dear one, my close one,
With you we walked through life for
years;
And the lots cast 'out by fate were
'yes' and 'no' for both of us.
Happiness shone down on both of us,
Grief shook us both.
We were, in weather good or bad,
True friends always.
The poems, to be sure, were ama-
teurish. But the power of poetry here is
such that Mr. Andropov's legend was
sure to get a major boost from the dis-
closure that he put his hand to verse.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/12/07: CIA-RDP90-00965R000705870008-0