Andropov was the Stolypin of Late Soviet Times, Romanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 12 – Because he served as head of the KGB so long and was leader of the Soviet Union for such a short time, because he surrounded himself with reformist intellectuals and promoted leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev, and because he both repressed many dissidents but protected others, the most contradictory theories abound about Yury Andropov.

            Most of these theories are wild exaggerations, ranging from those who argue that he wanted to restore Stalinism to those who say he was secretly engaged in a plot to destroy socialism and disintegrate the Soviet Union, Boris Romanov, an editor of the journal Democracy and Socialism in the 21^st Century says (ng.ru/ideas/2022-06-13/7_8459_andropov.html).

            Instead, having examined those who promote the one conspiracy theory or the other, Romanov argues that Andropov was committed to reforming the system rather than destroying it and that he was intellectually curious enough to consider various means to do that but lacked both the power and the time to carry things through.

            In that, the editor says, he was much like Petr Stolypin, Nicholas II’s prime minister who launched reforms to save the imperial system rather than destroy it and who, because of assassination, did not live long enough to carry out the policies he favored that would have left the empire in far better shape.

            The analogy between Andropov and Stolypin, Romanov says, is suggested by Antonio Gramsci’s observation that when an old order is dying but a new one is not ready to replace it, “many malignant symptoms manifest themselves.” Both Stolypin and Andropov tried to “rid state and society” of these things by both reform and repression. But both failed.