Having seen it first-hand in all Andropov era awfulness while growing up with the chance of instant apocalypse, yes, it still haunts mine.
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Having lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, I found Andropov and the rest of the senile pre-Gorbachev bosses shabby poseurs.
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When I was there in 1983, they were plenty scary. Maybe pikers next to Stalin, but the former head of the KGB was no slouch in the "this close to nuclear war" competition.
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Replying to @RadioFreeTom @CharlesPPierce and
After Stalin, who was the most threatening? Kruschev, Chernenko, Andropov, Brezhnev? I’m probably missing someone.
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Replying to @MichaelSlavitch @danvon1 and
That is not correct. Brezhnev was in fact an advocate of stability and "trust in cadres." I would argue that Andropov was the most dangerous of the bunch.
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Replying to @RadioFreeTom @danvon1 and
Interesting—wasn’t he (for a time) Gorbachev’s key sponsor?
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Replying to @arnonmishkin @RadioFreeTom and
I think more than for a time. He was his sponsor. Curious what Tom says. But my understanding has always been that Andropov’s dangerousness was rooted in his knowledge of the decay of the system and efforts to change that. In his own way was a reformer too.
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Replying to @joshtpm @arnonmishkin and
Yes, Andropov helped bring Gorby to Moscow. But Andropov was a rigid ideologue, and thought "reform" meant "work harder and drink less." He was also kind of paranoid about the US and the encirclement of the USSR.
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Replying to @RadioFreeTom @arnonmishkin and
My understanding was that the throughline was understanding that the economic stagnation of the Brezhnev era was unsustainable. So reformist in that sense. Find ways to build productivity that can undergird competing militarily with the west.
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Strange but true: Eugene Genovese, shortly before his hard turn to the right, said he really regretted Andropov's early death because he seemed like a guy who could fix the system.
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Replying to @HeerJeet @RadioFreeTom and
Genovese's life arc and scholarship is one of the greatest indictments of Marxism.
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Replying to @joshtpm @RadioFreeTom and
His life arc was strange and his politics (both when he was on the left and when he moved right) were generally very bad. But the scholarship has some value, particularly on in paternalism as ideological undergirding of slavery.
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