About the good Chekist

The new film by Sergey Medvedev under the optimistic name "Yuri Andropov. Fifteen months of hope" is shown on Channel One in connection with the 95th birthday of the protagonist. Attention to this figure is quite understandable. It is the image of the Secretary General of the Chekist that is the most attractive for the Putin regime, this is the part of the Soviet past, which is the most to his heart.

Yuri Andropov appears to be such a liberal authoritarian leader, who wanted to restore order in the state, and not to go down to the terror of the Stalinist type. Therefore, they say, even when he was the chairman of the KGB, he came up with the most prominent dissidents not to shoot, not put in camps and not even exile to Siberia, but just send them abroad. And the West is demonstrated by liberalism comparative with the Stalinist time, and the opposition within the country loses the most noticeable leaders and is not able to form in any powerful movement. At the same time, however, it is not mentioned by the wide development precisely with the Andropov punitive psychiatry - it is a shame to recall. Not a word that censorship was tightened into a short Andropov rule is by no means liberal in Brezhnev times.

In general, in the film about Andropov they say only well. This is facilitated by the selection of “speaking heads”: all of them either from the group of consultants created by Andropov when he was the head of the department of the social medium of the CPSU Central Committee, or from his subordinates in the Soviet embassy in Hungary and the KGB, or, finally, from his relatives. To make the image of Andropov more humane, the film tells in detail about his personal life, about his touching love for his second wife, about the verses that he read only in the closest circle. At the same time, it is also mentioned of his first family, which he threw either for the sake of new love, or for the sake of a career. It turns out that in this case, Yuri Vladimirovich did not act very beautifully, especially since the first family in the future did not help and showed complete indifference to his son, who became a criminal, drank and died early.

But on such trifles, the authors of the film do not delay attention. The main thing, Andropov wanted to make the best, pull the country out of the abyss. And only for this he strove for the supreme power. But by what means did he try to save the country, which, probably, could no longer be saved? Did he have any kind of action program? The film states that the question of who will become the successor of Brezhnev decided at the meeting of the Politburo after the death of Leonid Ilyich, in the struggle between Andropov and Chernenko. This is a long -standing legend that has nothing to do with reality. It was also needed in order to prove: until the very last moment, Yuri Vladimirovich was not sure that he would become the Secretary General, therefore he was concerned about the development of the action program only after coming to power. In fact, Andropov became Crown Prince in January 1982, when he changed his deceased Suslov as the second secretary of the Central Committee - secretary in ideology. So even then he could safely develop a transformation program. But I have not developed.

The film mentioned that Andropov considered corruption the main evil and was going to fall on it with the whole world and end this evil in a year. However, it has long been known that the level of corruption is inversely proportional to the level of development of democracy. And Andropov’s struggle with corruption was as unsuccessful as the struggle with it of the current authorities. When Andropov came to power, it turned out that the number of crimes related to corruption, as well as the theft of socialist property, has many times exceed the possibilities of Soviet courts.

The film mention mentioning mentioning that Andropov was going to reform socialism, but not according to the Yugoslav, but according to the Hungarian model. Probably, this is associated with the stay of Andropov as an ambassador to Hungary (although at that time in Hungary there was no talk of his model of socialism). However, all the reforms of Andropov came to the raids for truants and tightening administrative control over the economy. All these measures had nothing to do with the liberalism of the Hungarian model and did not lead to any positive results.

All raids in stores, cinemas and baths only led to the fact that people were lit up from idleness at workplaces. Due to the giant hidden unemployment in the Soviet Union, especially in the last 15-20 years of its existence, people at work often have nothing to do. But this is not said about this in the film.

If you watch a film not from the point of view of the enthusiastic admirer of Andropov, but objectively, it turns out that his authors of his hero, without wanting to, sometimes expose. One of the few revealing personnel in the film is the farewell of Andropov with the KGB college in 1982 by the Sickleham laughs in response to his short, with an attiring wit, they are worth a lot.

In the film, the physical weakness of Brezhnev in the last years of his reign is in every possible way: they say that the elderly Secretary General had time to rest. Some senior KGB officers even claim that they advised Andropov to raise the question of Brezhnev’s resignation, but this proposal rejected that the comrades in the Politburo would not understand him. I think that such a proposal is the fruit of pension fantasies of general generals. In the time of Brezhnev, such an initiative was equivalent to an attempt by a coup. At one time, Tukhachevsky and his comrades for the proposal to set aside Voroshilov paid their heads. In the "stagnant" times of the Front Generals would definitely be resigned, and Andropov to retire. From the film it becomes obvious that Andropov came to power by the most perfect ruin, and the last six months he was chained to a hospital bed and did not actually lead the country. The main thing is that the film itself - most likely, in addition to the will of its creators, proves: the Soviet system was doomed, and even internally honest, in the sense of not taking bribes and expensive gifts and not assigning themselves to themselves, the leaders like Andropov could still do anything to save the system.