The World - News from Aug. 24, 1989
A Soviet newspaper called Yuri V. Andropov the “last Stalinist” boss in the first open criticism of the former Soviet leader, considered at home and in the West as a reformer and mentor of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Komsomolskaya Pravda, the daily of the Communist Youth League, also pulled the wraps off Andropov’s 15-year career as the head of the KGB secret police, calling him “the most enigmatic figure” of the Leonid I. Brezhnev era. Andropov, who ruled just 15 months in 1982-83, instituted a crackdown on loafers by sending police into movie houses, bathhouses and stores to nab the idlers.
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