Andropov

This Biography has two qualities that other biographs on Andropov often is accused for. On one had it has substantially more to offer than a presentation of what has been written about Andropov in the media. On the other hand it deos not include a lot of poorly documented speculations. The reasons why several biographs of Andropov have these weeknesses, is that very limited information is available for the public about Yury Andropov and that the interest among biographers of writing a biograph about him, has been smaller than for many other Soviet leaders. Partly as a result of limited knowledge about Andropov and partly because it is essential to understand the state of affairs in Soviet politics in the Brezhnev years to understand how and why Andropov came to power and what policy he stood for, you get to know at least as much about an era in Soviet politics as about Anropov in this book. This is the reason why I have rated it with 4 stars instead of 5. As the chosen approach is sufficient to illustrate why anyone that is interested in Russian and Soviet politics and history should be interested in Yury andropov, I never considered to give it less than 4 stars. Opposed to many people's understanding, Anropov was the initiator of the Perestroyka (restructuring/rebuilding) policy - a reform process that to a large degree was initiated by the army/KGB aimed at fighting corruption and improving productivity by putting their own man - former KGB leader Andropov - in charge. In addition to a good biography about a very important era in Soviet politics, this book is a good intruduction to the Medvedev brothers, 2 very read-worthy Soviet scentists and dissedents that have written a lot of books on Soviet politics. Despite that they leave no doubt about where they stand with regards to the Soviet regime, their books are well balanced and informative.