COMRADE ANDROPOV

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170041-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 41
• Publication Date: November 15, 1982
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

ST,"S_r I
anitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-0
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
15 November 1982
PAC
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
STAT
Comrade Andropov I
force, an elite, well-equipped body of goals, with do-gooders of the type that
Yuri Andropov's seizure of the top several hundred thousand officers and Lenin once described as "useful idi-
job in the Soviet Communist Party troops who guard the Soviet Union's ots" and with the intelligence agen-
and empire was the most widely pre- 42;000-mile border, protect important Gies of friendly powers. Given a Rus-
dicted succession in 64 years of Soviet officials and control sensitive commu- sian penchant for deception that goes
government. That tells us something nications systems. Its officers operate back centuries, its agents are very
about Mr. Andropov but it tells us within the regular armed forces, ever good at this kind of work.
more about the importance the KGB vigilant for any signs of defection or western intelligence experts as-
has assumed in the internal and exter- dissent from party control. It spies on sume that the KGB -effectively con-
nal affairs of the Soviet Union. foreign visitors, bugging embassies trols the intelligence services of those
Mr. Andropov is not cut from quite and hotel rooms and culling informa- countries that are economically and
the same mold as old Bolsheviks like lion from such sources as Intourist militarily beholden to the Soviet Un-
Khrushchev and Brezhnev nor is he guides. It spies on ordinary Soviet cit- ion, possibly with the exception of
quite like some former secret police izens through an elaborate system of Vietnam. The agents of the Cuban
thugs. Stalin's notorious Lavrenti informers, agents provocateur and DGI blend far more easily into the life
Beria, for example. Tall and urbane, frill-time plainclothes cops, who also -of Latin American countries than
he speaks excellent English, likes employ"Intimidation?and`strong-ahb-' .would Russians. Indeed, they blend
Soviet Crossroads --II.
A n Editorial Series
Glenn Miller. records. good Scotch
whisky, Oriental rugs and American
books. His career soared after he suc-
cessfully deceived Hungarian freedom
fighter Pal Maleter in 1956, sending
him to his death and quelling the
bloody Hungarian uprising. According
to defector Petro Grigorenko, a for-
mer major general in the Soviet
army, Mr. Andropov's skills at sup-
pressing dissent have been finely
boned through countless similar de-
ceptions as he has moved up through
the ranks. Where Beria failed to seize
absolute power, Andropov has finally
given the KGB the status it so richly
deserves.
The Andropov succession confirms
what a lot of people have suspected:
The KGB has become the most impor-
tant power base within the party. To
understand how this has happened it
is necessary to have a better appreci-
ation of the size and scope of the KGB
than most Americans have. It is in-
deed an espionage organization, but it
is much, much more.
No one outside of a small coterie in .
the Kremlin and in KGB headquarters
at nearby Dzerzhinsky Square knows
the exact -size of the_KBG payroll,-but
a -good estimate would start at one
million men and women and go up
from there. It runs its own military
zact,cs when asked. easily into Spanish-speaking-areas of
The fact that the KGB is one of the the U.S. Soviet-Cuban penetration into
most effective and successful Soviet `-the-politics of CeniralAmertca; "Nica-
bureaucracies undoubtedly furthered ragua in particula'r,'ias-undoubtedly
Mr. Andropov's career. For example, 'been a feather: in ' jVir Andropov's
the Pentagon has lately been review- cap.
frig the systematic way the Soviets
" The new Soviet chief worked many
vacuum-cleaned" the U.S. for high years at Moscow. Center directing the
technology in the 1970s when detente KGB's troops, strategists, spooks and
opened up scientific and commercial thugs, using them for Internal control
exchanges. The effort eicploited legal
purchases of U.S. equipment, illeal and the projection of Soviet influence
abroad. He arrives at a time when the
purchases through third countries, le- - Soviet Communist Party is faced with
gal information gathering by Soviet a "crisis of legitimacy," that is to say
exchange scientists and
in some
,
rising questions among the Soviet peo
cases, outright theft. pies about whether it can improve
It is assumed that a high percent- their sad circumstances of life.
age of Soviet citizens who are as- We know he is capable of suppres-
signed abroad either work directly for sion. We know that he is skillful at
the KGB or provide the organization
?wvith any services demanded- of them. i manipulating the -agents and groups
-They would be foolish notto; consider. abroad who serve Soviet imperialist
ing the organization's power over aims. What we don't }grow is whether
their careers; a job at the U.N. Is far he has any better ideas than Mr.
d
for making the Soviet
preferable to a housing _ office in Brezhnev ha
Minsk. Hence, any Soviet citizen, system more economically'viable and
whether be be part of the-large trade more capable of unlocking the latent
mission' in Mexico City, -or selling, creativeness and energy of its citi-
Lada cars in Panama, or working for zens' if he does it will be a surprise. It
Aeroflot in London, can never be re- is no surprise that, with the Commu-
garded as simply an ordinary foreign ntst empire suffering economic de-
ational. cline, ideological exhaustion and erod-
ing popular morale, the party finds a
It is one task of the KGB to apply leader at this juncture of history by
its-skills of secrecy and deception to turning to the mastermind of its se-
projecting the Soviet party's influ-
ence. This it does through contacts
with legal Communist Parties abroad,
with 'groups sympathetic to Soviet
ILLEGIB
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/06/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000100170041-9