Andropov’s Suppression of Dissidents, 1967–82 (Edexcel A-Level History): Revision Notes

Andropov's Suppression of Dissidents, 1967–82

Background to Andropov's appointment

In 1967, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev appointed Yuri Andropov as head of the KGB (the Soviet secret police). This appointment marked a significant shift in how the Soviet state dealt with opposition and non-conformity.

Under Khrushchev (1953–64), the role of KGB chief had become relatively low-profile and was no longer seen as a stepping stone to greater political power. Andropov changed this. His success in the role was partly due to shifts at the top of the Communist Party. Whilst Khrushchev had shown some commitment to cultural freedom, Brezhnev and his colleagues were far more suspicious of liberalisation. Andropov shared these conservative views and was deeply mistrustful of cultural freedom and reform. He was also a skilled politician who enjoyed Brezhnev's personal trust, which gave him considerable influence.

Who was Yuri Andropov?

Born in 1914, Andropov came from a modest background. His father worked as an administrator on the railways, and Andropov was orphaned at just 13 years old. He had to work from a young age, taking jobs as a sailor and telegraph clerk. Despite these challenges, he took advantage of educational opportunities under Stalin and graduated from college at 19.

Andropov rose through the Communist Party ranks during the 1930s, benefiting from the purges that removed many senior figures. In the mid-1950s, he became the Soviet ambassador to Hungary, where he witnessed the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. This experience had a profound impact on him. He was horrified by how quickly the Hungarian Communist Party lost control when faced with popular protest.

After his appointment as KGB head in 1967, Andropov used his position to advocate for the suppression of dissidents and anti-Soviet activities. In 1968, he argued for swift Soviet intervention to crush the reformist government in Czechoslovakia. He was promoted to the Politburo (the Soviet Union's main decision-making body) in 1973 and played a key role in identifying talented individuals within the Communist Party, including Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he promoted.

Andropov's strategy and approach

Andropov's role was fundamentally different from that of earlier secret police chiefs like Dzerzhinsky, Yezhov and Beria. Whilst these men had virtually unlimited authority to imprison and execute people, Andropov's goal was much more focused. He aimed to control dissidents – the small minority of Soviet citizens who refused to conform to the regime's expectations. Importantly, he did not seek a return to the mass terror of the Civil War or Stalin era.

His core strategy can be summed up as achieving maximum control through minimum violence. This approach was designed to suppress opposition effectively whilst avoiding the negative publicity that came from mass repression. Andropov also wanted to expose and prosecute corruption within the Communist Party, though Brezhnev was less supportive of this agenda.

KGB Order No. 0051

In 1968, Andropov issued KGB Order No. 0051, titled 'On the tasks of state security agencies in combating ideological sabotage by the adversary'. This order formally established the policy of increased surveillance of dissidents and action against them.

Andropov's methods were informed by a series of trials of well-known artists between 1964 and 1966. These trials embarrassed the Soviet Government because other nations protested loudly, demanding artistic freedom. Learning from this experience, Andropov developed strategies that dealt with dissidents in more subtle ways, avoiding adverse international publicity.

Reforming the KGB

Between 1967 and 1970, Andropov introduced significant reforms to ensure the KGB could effectively identify and deal with dissidents:

• Anti-corruption measures: KGB agents were forbidden from accepting gifts and were required to declare their financial assets. This was designed to ensure agents remained loyal and incorruptible.

• Strict discipline: Agents whose relatives broke the law were dismissed. This ensured that KGB personnel maintained the highest standards of behaviour.

• Merit-based promotion: Andropov promoted KGB agents from across the entire Soviet Union based on their success in dealing with dissidents, rather than relying on personal connections or Moscow-based officials.

• Specialist unit: In 1967, he established Directorate V, a special branch of the KGB dedicated specifically to dealing with dissidents.

These reforms transformed the KGB into a highly efficient organisation capable of identifying and monitoring potential opponents of the regime.

Methods of dealing with dissidents

Emigration

Once the KGB had identified dissidents, Andropov employed two main strategies. For high-profile dissidents with international reputations, emigration was the preferred option. Several famous artists who consistently opposed the authorities were allowed to leave the Soviet Union in the 1970s. In total, over 100,000 potential 'trouble makers' were permitted to emigrate whilst Andropov headed the KGB.

This policy was particularly applied to Jewish emigration. Since the establishment of Israel in 1948, Soviet Jews had campaigned for the right to move to the new Jewish state. Previous Soviet leaders had refused these requests, but Andropov changed this policy. Most Jews who wanted to leave were granted exit visas.

Andropov justified this policy by pointing to Soviet demographics. Jews made up only about one per cent of the Soviet population, yet they were heavily represented in creative and intellectual professions. For example, one-fifth of writers and journalists were Jewish. Since these were the professions that produced many dissidents, allowing Jews to emigrate was, in Andropov's view, a pragmatic way of reducing dissent without resorting to overt oppression.

Repressive psychiatry

For less well-known dissidents, Andropov expanded the use of repressive psychiatry – sending people to psychiatric institutions for compulsory treatment. Whilst Stalin and Khrushchev had used this method, it was dramatically expanded under Brezhnev.

Andropov proposed this measure in April 1969, and it was endorsed in a secret resolution of the Council of Ministers later that year. Officially, the government claimed that anti-Soviet behaviour was evidence of a 'paranoid reformist delusion' – a supposed mental illness. Andropov did not actually believe this, but he recognised several advantages to this approach:

• Lower publicity: Sending someone to hospital attracted far less attention from international media than imprisoning them.

• Privacy: Criminal records were public documents that Western journalists could access to track imprisoned dissidents. Psychiatric records were private, making it easier for the government to hide its repression.

• Indefinite detention: Psychiatric patients could be held indefinitely for 'treatment', whereas prison sentences had fixed terms.

• Control: Psychiatric patients could be prescribed medication to keep them quiet and compliant.

The practice was used particularly against Protestant Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses. These groups were small and considered heretics by Russian Orthodox Christians, making them vulnerable to persecution.

Rumours about repressive psychiatry reached the West in the early 1970s. When a delegation of US psychiatrists visited the Soviet Union to inspect hospitals, Andrei Snezhnevsky, President of the Association of Soviet Psychiatrists, successfully persuaded them that Soviet psychiatry was serving patients appropriately.

Prevention and official warnings

Andropov shifted the KGB's emphasis from repression to prevention. He believed Stalinist mass repression had been ineffective, and there was growing belief within the Party that socialism was incompatible with widespread repression.

From November 1972, the KGB adopted a policy of issuing official warnings. Dissidents were interviewed by KGB agents and warned to stop their unorthodox activities. These individuals were then placed under surveillance. This strategy aimed to stop dissident activity without resorting to violence or creating negative publicity through trials.

The policy was extensive: around 70,000 Soviet citizens received KGB warnings in the 1970s. KGB agents estimated these warnings prevented the formation of approximately 2,000 subversive groups in the early 1970s alone.

However, warnings did not always work. When dissidents refused to conform, they could face:

• Demotion or dismissal: Many intellectuals ended up working as janitors during the 1970s as punishment for their anti-Soviet attitudes.

• Psychiatric institutions: Forced 'treatment' in mental hospitals.

• Internal exile: Being forced to live in a particular city away from Moscow.

• Imprisonment: The number of people imprisoned for creating anti-Soviet propaganda increased significantly after Andropov's appointment – from 171 in 1965–67 to 528 in 1968–70.

Andropov was also prepared to use show trials for propaganda purposes, such as the 1972 trial of dissidents Pyotr Yakir and Viktor Krasin, who ran the samizdat human rights magazine Chronicle of Current Events. Additionally, the KGB would use violence to intimidate dissidents, as in the case of the 'Bulldozer Exhibition' of 1974.

Samizdat publications

Samizdat refers to self-published materials that began circulating in the Soviet Union from the late 1950s. Underground publishing became possible due to Khrushchev's policy of increasing consumer goods availability. The greater availability of typewriters and paper allowed dedicated writers and their supporters to publish and circulate their own magazines and books outside official channels.

These publications spread dissident ideas and provided an alternative source of information to official state propaganda.

High-profile dissidents: Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn

Andrei Sakharov and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn were the most prominent dissidents during the Brezhnev period. They represented different traditions of opposition. Sakharov advocated for human rights, whilst Solzhenitsyn was a Russian nationalist and devoted member of the Russian Orthodox Church. For Andropov, they embodied the two greatest threats to the Soviet Union: human rights ideology and Russian nationalism.

Andrei Sakharov

Sakharov had gained fame through his work on the Soviet nuclear programme and was known as the 'Father of the Hydrogen Bomb'. From 1962, he became increasingly critical of the damage caused by Soviet nuclear tests. In 1964, he led a campaign to expel Trofim Lysenko, Khrushchev's favourite scientist, from the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

In 1968, Sakharov made his criticisms public by circulating an essay titled Reflections on Progress, arguing that the Soviet Union should respect human rights. The essay was a samizdat production, not officially authorised. The samizdat network proved extremely effective – within a month, the essay had been published in the West and broadcast on the BBC.

Despite this, Sakharov continued writing. In 1975, he published My Country and the World, which proposed reforming the Soviet Union based on human rights principles. For this work, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Sakharov was refused permission to leave the Soviet Union and was kept under constant surveillance. KGB documents described him as 'Public Enemy Number One'. Eventually, he was sent into internal exile, forced to remain in the city of Gorky.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn was a writer who became famous for his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. He finished his novel The Gulag Archipelago in 1968, smuggling the manuscript to the West for publication. The book exposed the horrors of Stalin's prison camp system and could not be published in the Soviet Union.

The Helsinki Agreement

The 1975 Helsinki Agreement committed countries across Europe to respect human rights. The Soviet Government signed this agreement. Following 1975, dissidents used the agreement to demonstrate that the Soviet treatment of dissidents breached the country's international obligations.

The 1979 law and order campaign

Apart from one or two high-profile cases, Andropov's methods were largely successful in controlling Soviet dissidents. However, 1979 was a particularly difficult year for the Soviet Government, leading them to introduce stricter policies in anticipation of growing dissent.

Problems facing the leadership included:

• Economic slowdown
• Poor harvests
• The war in Afghanistan
• The failure of Brezhnev's negotiations with the USA
• Growing corruption
• Increasing non-conformity

Andropov attacked various forms of anti-social behaviour including hooliganism, drunkenness and corruption.

Monitoring popular discontent, 1982–85

Andropov succeeded Brezhnev as Soviet leader in 1982, but retained control of the KGB. In the early 1980s, the KGB continued to monitor public opinion, an initiative Andropov had led since 1968.

KGB agents monitored public opinion through various techniques:

• Posing as Westerners to initiate anti-government conversations with Soviet citizens
• Phone tapping
• Intercepting mail

Andropov was aware of Brezhnev's failings as a leader, including widespread government corruption and popular discontent. He was also concerned about growing anti-Communist feeling in Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland where rising food prices had led to mass strikes. Andropov used information about popular discontent to justify a series of authoritarian policies.

Popular discontent and social malaise

KGB reports pointed to growing popular discontent in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Several causes were identified. Soviet citizens:

• Were anxious that their standard of living was improving more slowly as the 1970s progressed
• Were dissatisfied with the quality and availability of food and consumer goods
• Felt there were insufficient opportunities for promotion in Soviet industry, meaning hard work would not lead to improved status or pay
• Resented the privileges and corruption of Party members and managers

According to KGB reports, this loss of faith in the system led to social malaise, which included increases in:

• Alcoholism
• Poor labour discipline
• Black market trade
• Avoidance of military service
• Demand for Western goods
• Sympathy for strikes taking place in Poland
• Church attendance
• A falling birth rate