It was these intimidating purges that caused the future KGB chairman to have a heart attack. Yuri Vladimirovich Belnov, a former Soviet*** central staffer, recounted the experience:
"I sensed already in Andropov's parlor that something was wrong, there was a smell of medicine in the air, and several doctors came out of their offices. Yuri Vladimirovich was suffering from a serious heart condition and was given several injections. I went into Andropov's office and he was lying on the couch, looking very bad."
Despite the difficulty of breathing at the time, Andropov gave this practical advice for dealing with the KGB. In more unusual circumstances, he might have been more subtle.
Senior Kremlin officials clearly show us a life of deceit. Before he was appointed chairman of the KGB, Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet ****, responsible for matters of relations with the socialist fraternal parties. At that time there was a distinguished guest from Prague in Moscow. According to the rank of the party, the honorable mission of taking him to the airport fell to Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko, a member of the Politburo and secretary of the Central Committee. This is a man whom no one would describe with the words charming and cute.
Somehow something went wrong, mostly because the officer in charge of security in the Ninth Department of the KGB got the wrong time for the departure of the special plane, and Kirilenko therefore concluded that he would not be able to get to the airport in time. As Yuri Belnov recalls, he "rudely" reprimanded Andropov for disrupting an important political event. The unlucky Andropov sat in his office in the old square, unable to figure out the exact time of the plane's departure from the government airport, while the furious Kirilenko called from time to time and lost his temper.
For thousands of Soviets, Andropov was a man who was to become the country's supreme leader in the future, a man who would be envied and in whose presence one had to be careful. But for Kirilenko, he was then little more than a henchman. It was this conversation with the secretary of the Central Committee, who was much higher in rank, that caused Andropov to have a heart attack.
One can only imagine how rude and headstrong the small, Napoleonic Andrei Pavlovich Kirilenko was, and how, thanks to Brezhnev, he climbed to the position of second-in-command of the country, before a serious brain lesion led to a complete breakdown of his personality.
But how cowardly and unfortunate was the legendary Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov in this case, when a yell from a member of the Politburo, and a minor one at that, caused him to fall ill! How could such a man be considered a brilliant reformer with an iron will? This incident only shows that Yuri Andropov was a man who had no opinion, who was easily swayed by the opinions of others, and who was very unsure of himself, who was accustomed to avoiding conflicts, and who instinctively refused to disobey his superiors' will.
Kirilenko was the first person Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov sacked after he became general secretary of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union in November 1982.
Kirilenko was very ill at the time. Kirilenko was very ill at the time and of course could not work. But Brezhnev did not send him into retirement, as was his custom, and he did not want to condescend to his old friend. Instead, Andropov asked Kirilenko to write a resignation. Since Kirilenko feared that he was incapable of writing such an important document, Andropov himself wrote one on his behalf. Kirilenko simply transcribed it with a trembling hand ......
Looking to the Sailor-Master
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was born on June 15, 1914, at Nagutskaya station in the Stavropol Krai, into the family of a railroad telegraph operator. When he was only five years old, his father died. His mother, a music teacher, also died rather early, in 1927. Yuri Vladimirovich had to earn his own living and eke out a living.
Andropov's mother, Evgenia Karlovna Fainshtai, had a surname that was not Russian, so it was said that he was of Jewish origin. Those who met Yuri Andropov even felt that his appearance had Semitic features. Perhaps that is because they wanted to discover those features ......
Valery Ivanovich Borgin, who was an aide to Gorbachev, writes that Andropov's popularity angered Mikhail Sergeyevich. Once, in a fit of pique, he said to Borgin, "What special service has Andropov done for the country? Think about it: he was the chairman of the KGB, sent dissidents to prison and mental hospitals, drove many out of the country, but why didn't the media in our country and in foreign countries eat him alive? Because he's a half-breed, and they certainly don't bully their own people."
Gorbachev's point about the sympathetic nature of Jews around the world coincides with the suspicions of active first-generation Russian nationalists, who seem to have sent people to Andropov's hometown to investigate his genealogy. Even if Andropov knew that his comrades thought his curriculum vitae was less than squeaky clean, then he had already proved by his own actions that they were wrong. During his time in the KGB, Andropov fought vigorously against "Zionism," which in practice meant banning Jews from leaving the country, doing everything possible to suppress interest in learning about the language, culture and history of the Jews, and keeping a close eye on "non-indigenous people" so that they would not occupy too prominent a position. The KGB's Fifth Bureau was established. The KGB's Fifth Bureau created a division dedicated to fighting hostile Zionist activity. ......
Andropov went to school in the city of Mozdok, in North Ossetia, the same city that is currently in the news because of events in the Caucasus. Later Andropov went on to complete the Rebinsk Secondary Technical School of Water Transportation.
When he was chairman of the KGB, he took the exams for the Higher Party School of the Central Committee of the Soviet **** as an external candidate. He didn't feel quite right without a higher education diploma. The Higher Party School was for practical working leaders in high positions who had neither a diploma nor the time (or more often, the ability) to get an education.
It was later rumored that he was very learned and proficient in English. Neither the former, nor the latter, is true. He did try to learn English, but by that time he was chairman of the KGB, and at his age at the time, and so busy, it was impossible. However, the experience of working abroad, reading books and materials, and socializing with intellectuals somehow compensated for his lack of systematic education.
Andropov was apprenticed to a telegraph operator and a film projectionist in Mozdok, and after graduating from a secondary technical school went to work at the Volodarsky shipyard, sailing on the Volga. The desire to become a seaman did not seem very strong. After arriving on the shore, he became a full-time ****youth officer. In his own experience on the water, there was only one captain he could not forget, who had a firm grip on the crew and was a model of leadership in his mind.
From the age of 22, Andropov worked in the **** Youth League and the party apparatus, in between as an ambassador and chairman of the KGB. He never headed any actual productive sector or any region. He had neither much knowledge nor practical experience in industry, agriculture and finance.
In this respect, his career path was similar to that of Cherepin: from the regiment to the party, and from the party to the KGB. The advantages of this life path are obvious: a clear understanding of the state institutions, the mysterious forces that control the country, and a good use of the levers of power. The beauty was that all knowledge about the state was acquired indirectly, from the conversations of others, materials and analytical reports of the ministry. The hundreds of pages of secret documents that are put on the desks of the central secretary and the KGB chairman every day surely give the impression that there is already a comprehensive understanding of what is happening in the country. This is in fact mostly an illusion.
In the case of internal KGB correspondence, where nothing was concealed, some deep-rooted dogmas went unquestioned. Probably because of this, Andropov did think that what the state needed was mainly to bring order, serious discipline and fight corruption, not reform.
In the years of purges, it was easy for regimental cadres to soar, as long as they could do so with a clear conscience; in 1937 Andropov was elected second secretary of the Yaroslavl regional regimental committee, and the following year he was promoted to first secretary, and in 1940 he was transferred to Petrozavodsk, where he became first secretary of the Central Committee of the Karelian I. Finnish Soviet Socialist **** and State Regiments.
In the 20s and 30s, this land was the Karelia Autonomous **** and State within the territory of the Russian Federation. However, after declaring war on Finland, Stalin had long-term plans. If these plans were realized and Finland surrendered, the size of Finland's territory would presumably shrink considerably, while the size of Karelia would, on the contrary, expand. The Autonomous ****Peace State of Karelia was renamed in advance to Karelia-Finland ****Peace State, and its status was raised to that of a Joined ****Peace State.
Leading this new ****peace state was Otto Wilhelmovich Kuusinen, one of the founders of the Finnish ****production party, who had worked for many years in the ****production international. He later became Andropov's backer. Kusinen was a learned, intelligent and gentle man, and the young **** Youth League secretary benefited greatly from his association with him.
In 1935, Yuri Vladimirovich got married for the first time to Nina Ivanovna Yengarecheva, who graduated from the same technical school as him. They had two children, a daughter (born in 1937) and a son (born in 1940).
The daughter Evgeniki became a doctor and lived in Yaroslavl. Named Vladimir in honor of his grandfather
The son of Vladimir went to prison twice, then worked in Tiraspol, was an alcoholic and died at a young age.
Soon after the birth of his son, Andropov went to Petrozavodsk, alone and without his family. He divorced Nina Ivanovna and then married for the second time, and this time also had two children, a son and a daughter.
Andropov did not care about the children from his first marriage. Memories of the past upset him, and he himself almost never talks about them, nor does he like it when people talk about things he wants to forget.
Andropov did not go to the front, he was a leader of the **** and state regiments for four years, and in 1944 he was transferred to party work as the second secretary of the party committee of the city of Petrozavodsk, an enviable position for a 30-year-old. After the war he was already second secretary of the Central Committee of the Karelian-Finnish **** and National ****production Party. During this period, he was indirectly affected by the "Leningrad case", which began in 1949.
After the arrest of key figures such as Kuznetsov, the central secretary, and Voznesensky, the first deputy head of government, the Ministry of State Security began a nationwide search for cadres of Leningrad origin. Party cadres who had made their fortunes from Leningrad were removed from their posts and arrested. Petrozavodsk did not escape the storm. Opinions of those in the know as to what really happened there at the time are divided. Some say that during the purges, a terrified Andropov went out of his way to frame his party comrades in order to save himself. Others say that Andropov himself was a target of the purge, and that it was the kushinin who saved him once again.
Lieutenant General Vadim Kirpichenko writes that Andropov was not a vindictive person. Once, the KGB chairman wanted to know about the work of the staff member who had been in charge of his problems during the "Leningrad case" and who had almost led to his arrest. Yuri Vladimirovich not only did not punish this person, but did not even send him to retirement
Not holding grudges and being broad-minded are commendable qualities. But why would the state security agencies keep an investigator who fabricated such a vile and nasty thing? And even if this incident were true, would it mean that Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov had not in his heart condemned his predecessor in Lubyanka?
In 1952, Kusinin was elected to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Soviet ****. Andropov was transferred from Petrozavodsk to the central authorities in Moscow, and in 1953 to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was head of the Fourth European Department. After Stalin's death, the Central Committee decided to send experienced Party cadres to work in socialist countries. It was not long before he was sent to Budapest as a counselor in the embassy. The following year, 1954, he was appointed ambassador to Hungary.
Alexei Alexeevich Yepishev, the former deputy minister of state security for personnel issues, went to Romania as ambassador. Georgi Mikhailovich Popov, who was the central secretary and the first secretary of the Moscow City Committee, was sent to Poland.
Popov, a famously headstrong man, behaved in Poland as if he were a commissar of a group of anarchists, dictating to the head of the party and government, Boles?aw Beirut, at the slightest pretext, and he was even in charge of the Polish peasantry as to how they should plough the land and how they should sow the seeds, and in the end said that even if Beirut had offered him the post of secretary of one of the districts in the Moscow oblast he would not have wanted it.
Angry Beirut could not stand it, called Khrushchev and said, if he can not even a district secretary, then he should consider his own resignation. Khrushchev rushed to comfort him. Summoned Popov back from Warsaw, spent a long time to find him a job, and finally he was sent to Vladimir as the director of an aeronautical instrumentation plant.
Because of his character and temperament, Ambassador Andropov behaved much more wisely. But his role in Hungary also resembled a kind of admiral.
Thirty tanks surrounded the embassy
The exhaustive compilation of documents, The Soviet Union and the Hungarian Crisis of 1956, is a major achievement by scholars and archivists, and it is a book that contributes to a more accurate appraisal of the role of the Soviet ambassador in those tragic events.
Three years as an ambassador taught Andropov a great deal and broadened his horizons. He saw that life could be more than just a Yaroslavl or Petrozavodsk kind of thing. Budapest had always been a European city. Even in those days, ambassadorial life itself still brought a certain sense of refreshment. Besides, the new ambassador was only 40 years old.
But Andropov became ambassador at a time when Hungary's economic situation was made more difficult by accelerated industrialization, and when peasants were furious at the idea of rural cooperatives. To the Hungarians' displeasure, they hadn't even had the kind of shift that had happened in the Soviet Union after the 20th Congress of the Soviet***, so they demanded a change of leadership, starting with the dictatorial national leader Rákosi Magas, and a rehabilitation of all those who had been repressed: the staff of the Ministry of State Security sent by Stalin had helped their Hungarian comrades to unleash a bloody purging of the... ...
Ambassador Andropov, a staunch supporter of Rákosi, followed with suspicion the return to politics of Kádár János, who had been punished earlier, and saw his return to the Politburo as "a major concession to the right and demagogues". Kádár was deputy general secretary of the ****production party and minister of the interior after the war. Initially involved in the organization of the political movement, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on trumped-up charges. Although he was later rehabilitated, a label of distrust was attached to him. Moscow feared that harboring a grudge against the punishment would lead Kadar to join the opposition.
An analysis of some of the documents shows that the Budapest embassy was in contact with only a small group of people who followed a dogmatic line and based their conclusions on the information they received from them to inform Moscow. When Khrushchev was in power, the opinions of the KGB could not be compared with those of the embassy.
The Hungarian leader scrambled to give Andropov a detailed account of the meetings of the Politburo and the government, as well as of some of the informal conversations between the country's leaders, and lost no time in bad-mouthing his political opponents and the opposition.
If you read Andropov's ciphered telegrams from Budapest, you get the impression that the only problem in Hungary is that a handful of "right-wing" elements are obstructing the normal work of the country, and that the Politburo can be brought together by dealing with them. But then it suddenly became clear that the people had revolted. ......
It is also puzzling why the name Imre Nagy appeared repeatedly in the cables, and why everyone feared he would return to politics, but he did. The embassy seemed paralyzed with fear at Nagy's return. It was only later that it became clear that he was one of the most popular politicians in Hungary and people wanted him to come to power.
Imre Nagy was not an idle man, having been captured by the Russians in 1916 during the First World War. He embraced the revolution and joined the Bolsheviks. After the civil war he was sent to Hungary to work underground.
In 1930 he returned to Moscow, where he lived for 15 years, working at the International Agricultural Research Institute of the ****Production International and the Central Statistical Office of the USSR.
After 1945 he became a minister and headed the Hungarian government, but was labeled a "right-leaning element" and was dismissed from all his posts and expelled from the party.
In the summer of 1989, the chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov, handed Gorbachev a stack of documents from his department's archives. From these documents it is clear that Naji Imre was a newspaper clerk in the NKVD before the war. He had been recruited in 1933 and had reported to the intelligence services on the activities of fellow Hungarians who had taken refuge in the Soviet Union.
This saved Nagy from prison, and in March 1938 he was arrested by purges from the Moscow Bureau of the NKVD, but he spent a total of **** only four days in jail. The Fourth Division (Special Division) of the General Directorate of State Security of the Ministry of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs stood up for him, and the future Prime Minister of Hungary was released.
Why did Kryuchkov take the documents out of the archives? He said this in an accompanying letter to Gorbachev:
"A halo hangs over Nagy's head, and he is spoken of as a sufferer, as a man who is not greedy for personal gain, as a particularly honest and scrupulously principled man. Of all the tributes to Nagy, the one that says the most is that he was a 'thoroughgoing fighter against Stalinism' and a 'champion of democracy and thoroughgoing reformist socialism'. A series of articles published in the Hungarian press bluntly suggested that it was under Soviet pressure that Nagy was accused of counter-revolutionary activities, sentenced to death and executed."
Kryuchkov, who worked with Andropov at the Soviet embassy in Budapest, appears to have hated Nagy Imre with a passion, and for that reason went out of his way to break the sacred rules of secret service by divulging the name of the secret worker. Kryuchkov, who seems to be a man not too easily agitated, failed to hold back from telling the Hungarians: behold, what a national hero you have!
Upon receiving the documents, Hungarian historians were outraged, saying that they were forgeries, that the documents were forged. But the documents were mostly authentic, because in those days all the staff of the ****production international were forced to report about the enemy. What kind of ****production member are you if you don't expose the enemies of the people? What kind of Bolshevik are you if you don't help the NKVD?
Nagy Imre's idea of reform was a whole set of ideas for economic transformation, which the Hungarians wanted to put into practice. A broad political opposition formed in Hungary, and they saw that the Yugoslavs were building their economy and politics in a different way, and the Poles were beginning to solve their internal problems without instructions from Moscow.
In October 1956, Nagy Imre was restored to his position in the party. Naji was encouraged by the Polish example: W?adys?aw Gomulka, who had been accused of right-leaning nationalism and arrested in 1949, was rehabilitated in Poland and reinstated in his post. Gomulka became the head of Poland. Since Moscow agreed to that kind of change in Poland, might it also allow Hungary to follow in its footsteps?
Things were equally grim in Poland. Workers took to the streets, chanting slogans against the Soviet Union and socialism. Marshal Konev received instructions to mobilize Soviet troops to Warsaw. Polish generals, especially those in the Interior Forces, which had fewer Soviet puppets, warned that they would open fire on Soviet troops.
Against Moscow's will, W?adys?aw Gomulka was elected first secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. Khrushchev recognized that it was better not to interfere.
Field Marshal Konstantin Konstantinovich Rokossovsky, who had been sent by Stalin to work in the brotherly country of Poland in 1949, was ousted from the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Polish Unified Workers' Party (PULP) and lost his post as Minister of Defense. Upon his return to Moscow he said bitterly, "In Russia I was always seen as a Pole, and in Poland I was seen as a Russian."
The Hungarian delegation was invited to Moscow to discuss the situation in Poland, but it was not expected that the Hungarian situation would jump to the forefront. There was a firefight in Budapest and demonstrators toppled a huge statue of Stalin.
Ambassador Andropov still insisted that the whole problem lay in the indecisiveness of the Hungarian Politburo, in unprincipled concessions. The embassy is relying on people who have not been embraced by the people. Even the ****producers say they want to build Hungarian, not Soviet, socialism.
The embassy knows everything that happens at the top of Hungary's leadership - the minute details, the subtleties of the relationships between each other, even the signs. But what the opposition leaders say and do, the embassy knows nothing.
On October 23, a demonstration by university students, first banned and then allowed, turned into a massive protest against the authorities.
Ambassador Andropov bluntly asked the commander of the Soviet special forces in Hungary to move his troops into Budapest. But the other replied that he needed to have an order from the Ministry of Defense.
Andropov made contact with Moscow, and the Chief of the General Staff, Vasily Danilovich Sokolovsky, called the army commander over a high-frequency communications line to give the order. It was thought that as soon as the Soviet tanks appeared, all problems would be solved, just as they had been on June 17, 1953, after the Soviet intervention in Berlin.
But the Hungarians began to resist. They shot at the Soviets and threw bottles with combustible mixtures at the tanks. The Soviets could not calm the city. The Hungarian army did not help them, and the resistance fighters grew to number in the thousands. Shooting at the unarmed marchers and strafing civilian homes with tank guns and machine guns were acts that further increased anti-Soviet sentiment.
In response to popular demand, Naji Imre became the head of the government. He requested the withdrawal of Soviet troops from the capital Budapest.
In Moscow there was a difference of opinion. Khrushchev said that we are not living in the era of the ****production international and should not dictate to the fraternal party. In Poland, Khrushchev took the risk of pointing to Gomulka: despite the fact that he did not listen much to Moscow, he controlled the country. And in Hungary, he decided to support Nagy's government by pulling his troops out of Budapest. The tanks were withdrawn. This was not a ruse. Khrushchev had realized that there was a crisis in relations between the socialist countries and that the principles of the past had to be revised.
But no sooner had the troops withdrawn than there was bloodshed in Budapest: a crowd punished the staff of the capital's municipal party committee. Officers of the Hungarian security apparatus were recognized because they were wearing yellow boots uniformly issued by the General Service. They were hung head down from a tree.
This brought about a change of attitude in the Kremlin.
This period coincided with the outbreak of war in the Middle East. Britain, France and Israel attacked Egypt, which had just recently established close relations with the Soviet Union. Moscow did not want to suffer another defeat in Hungary against the backdrop of the inevitable defeat in Egypt. Moreover, it was clear that the United States and the West would not step in to protect Hungary.
The Kremlin decided to send troops again, and this time to act decisively. The Chairman of the Council of Ministers, Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin, first proposed to establish a credible government in Budapest, since the current government was "not doing well". The search for a candidate for head of government began. There were two candidates - Kádár Janosz and the Minister of the Interior Minnich Ferenc. Both were transferred to the Soviet garrison and sent to Moscow for interviews. Kadar was more popular and after a little hesitation he agreed to lead the government.
When Ambassador Andropov angrily told Naji Imre in Budapest that he had nothing to do with the disappearance of Minnih and Kadar, they had returned with the Soviets. They stayed in the base camp of Marshal Konev, who was in charge of directing the operation. Kadar was brought back by Soviet armored personnel carriers.
Khrushchev later explained in a secret conversation with the Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito that we could not allow Hungary to return to capitalism because in our Soviet Union, people would say that it did not happen when Stalin was in power, and these critics of Stalin threw everything away ......
In frank conversations among the members of the Central Presidium, Khrushchev and the others did not think to say that the events in Hungary had Western meddling, that they had been orchestrated by Western spies. They knew full well that it was the people who had risen up against them and that the Hungarian ****production party no longer existed. All they could count on was the Soviet army and a small group of people led by Kádár János.
The Soviet army that invaded numbered 60,000 men.
Most of the Hungarian soldiers did not resist, knowing it would not help. But some troops chose to fight, and thousands of insurgents joined their ranks. They had a few tanks, some artillery. They even shot down a Soviet plane using anti-aircraft weapons.
The Soviet embassy was unharmed because there were 30 tanks defending the building. The horrors experienced in Budapest stayed forever in Andropov's memory, and his wife was said to have been particularly hard hit.
On November 1, Prime Minister Nagy Imre declared the abrogation of the Warsaw Pact and the neutrality of Hungary.
He made a radio address informing of the armed intervention by the Soviet Union: 'In the early hours of this morning, Soviet troops began an attack on our capital in a blatant attempt to overthrow the legitimate democratic government of Hungary. Our troops are fighting. The government remains steadfast in its position."
One by one, the resistance was wiped out under intense fire from Soviet artillery and tanks.
In the Hungarian incident, the total Soviet **** was 640 killed and 1,251 wounded. Hungarian losses *** counted 2,652 killed and 19,226 wounded.
The Kádár government fired on the miners' parade, banned the activities of the workers' councils, arrested the leaders of the workers' councils, and disbanded the writers' and journalists' associations. A field military court was authorized and given the power to hand down quick death sentences. Kadar's lack of support at home and his increasing cruelty and ruthlessness under the influence of his Soviet comrades gave Moscow unspeakable pleasure.
The deposed Nagy Imre and several ministers still loyal to him and their families took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy in Budapest. Kadar said he would guarantee their inviolability and promised not to hold them accountable. So Nagy and others agreed to leave the Yugoslav embassy.
In the car, a Soviet officer sat down next to them, as if to send them all home individually. There were two Yugoslav diplomats in the car. But the car unexpectedly stopped in front of the building of the Soviet representative office, and the Soviet officer forced the Yugoslav diplomats out of the car. Soviet armored vehicles then surrounded the car, and Nagy, his colleagues and their families were taken to Romania. At first they were under the supervision of Romanian state security staff, then they were thrown into prison, and on April 17, 1957, they were returned to Hungary. Kadar did not fulfill his promise.
Nagy Imre, his defense minister, Mauleidair Barr, and several others were sentenced to death, and the rest were sentenced to prison terms ranging in years. Naji refused to ask for a pardon. It is said that Kadar was present at the execution and that he telephoned Khrushchev afterwards. There were certain personal factors involved in the affair: Kádár had suffered agonizing pain while in prison, and he saw Nagy Imre as the culprit of his own suffering ......
The main lesson Andropov learned in Hungary was simple and clear. He saw that if the party was negligent in its ideological oversight, then it could easily lose state power. Nothing else, neither economic difficulties nor enemy spies, could break the party's power.
The inherent logic of the survival of the socialist system is that at the slightest relaxation, the system begins to disintegrate.
The harshness of the lesson also lies in the fact that along with the fear of losing power, Andropov experienced a purely physical fear. He witnessed firsthand how Hungarian state security workers were lynched. He did not want that to happen to him.
It is said that what he experienced in Budapest had a very harmful effect on Andropov's wife. She began to suffer from frequent minor ailments, while he gradually lost the fullness of his family life and had to work ......
Surgeon Dr. Plaskoviniu Nikolaevna 'Moshintseva describes her own experience of more than 30 years of work in the Fourth Department of the USSR's Ministry of Health, which was part of the Ministry of Health, in her book Secrets of the Kremlin Hospitals. Fourth Department for more than 30 years, in which she also spoke of Andropov's wife: "More than once she was admitted to the neurological department, and could not stop asking for injections ...... She merely suspected that she had a disease here or there, and asked for anesthetics to be used. She had no regard for sedatives. It seems that from a young age she was used to anesthetics. Now I feel that this is the doctor's fault. At the mere sound of her husband's name, they were uncontrollably frightened and gave in to her capricious demands. It was the doctors who made her addicted to narcotics."