Yuri Andropov

Service/branch
 Rank

**Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov-Fyodorov** is a Russian diplomat, intelligent and state security officer.

## Early Life to TaGop

Much is unknown about the early life of Andropov, as he prefer to tell a different story everytime to a different crowd. Under the light of the TaGoP the official biography that Andropov told with firm conviction is that his family was of Russian ethnicity, the son of a former Imperial Russian Army soldier who died during the First Great War and on his mother side, an adopted daughter of a Finnish Jewish storeowner in Moscow. During the Russian Revolution, his family fled their property during the anti-German and communist mood of the time, creating in him a lifelong hatred against the red enemy (or so he told). After the end of the civil war, the family shop was restored to their grandparents. During his youth, from his grandparents money, Andropov was able to receive a higher education and worked as a factory manager for a time, during the global economic downturn, the factory he worked at went bankrupt and unable to find works elsewhere, he enlisted in the bureaucracy, namely briefly the Okharana department in Yaroslav. When a specialised proffessional state security organ was created to replace the bloated OKRN, he was one of the many recommended to the new TaGoP organisation. During his service from 1937 to 1941, Andropov worked in the TaGoP Second Department of Army Affairs, chiefly to counter the influence of radical propaganda from reaching the rank and file soldiers like what happened in 1917.

Soon after the declaration of the Great Patriotic War in 1941, and the Russian troops began entering territories in Belarus and Ukraine, which dubbed the "reunited territories". The current military intelligence organ at the time, the army found the need to incorporate the function of home front security and underground cells liquidation capacity of the TaGoP and thus the 2nd Department TaGoP, merged with the 5th Department of General Staffs to form the Front Intelligence Directorate, this brought along with it all employees of the 2nd Department including Andropov into military rank, officially commissioned as a Lieutenant.

## Front Intelligence Directorate: the Butcher of Minsk

The 2nd Department continue in the same functionality abeit with more freedom and a harsher degree of no longer suppression of dissidents but liquidation of enemies of the Russian people. Yuri Andropov was appointed the head of the 2nd Department office in Minsk during the war after the Russian army took over the city. The population and especiallly the jewry of the city was extremely restless due to rumors from the German side of the black hundreds and cossack savages coming with the Russian army to do pogroms. During the first few years of the occupation, remant military of the White Ruthenian and underground Belarussian nationalists and socialists began their partisan resistance and an attempted uprising briefly occured with shootings in the city center, the Russian immediately began a campaign of liqudidation of all hostile anti-Russian cells including the killing of nearly 200 former Belarussian officers and civilians, as well as the deportation and internment that caused numberous more deaths. Andropov was nicknamed the "Butcher of Minsk" for involvement. But French Bureau record from the wartime archives of the Bolshevik Legion espionage activites reported that this is mostly an exaggeration of Andropov's role as most orders of arrests and liqudidation are confirmed and issued by the office of the FID and personally that of Captain Andropov, but these are decided from higher ranks from the General Staff of the Belarussian Front and carried out by more senior army officers and bureaucrats in the city. Andropov names never occured in the discussions for these orders.

## G.R.U to diplomatic career

Ended the war with the rank of Major, after the 2nd Department returned to the TaGoP, feeling that he could get faster promotion and opportunity serving in the expanding offices of the GRU across multiple countries. Andropov opted to switch employment to the GRU in its foreign affair and economic department. This was the beginning of Andropov's career in the diplomatic corps, as the department often accompany and assist the office of the Ambassador. Eventually serving as liason officer between the Moscow and Russian forces in Hungary and Slovakia.

The final climax of Andropov seemingly irrelevant life come in 1948, during the intense power struggle in the Kremlin and Marshal Wrangel was deposed in a corrective action by the Young Kornilovite clique. More aligning with the Young Kornilovites sensing that it might help his career if the old guards are eliminated, he chose to delay the infomations to the military commands in Hungary by a full day, contributing to the failure of them to mobilise and threaten Moscow before it could consolidate. In 1949, as expected the old guards are retired creating a large gap that was to be filled by younger people and Andropov was promoted to the diplomatic corps in Prussia, with the rank in the GRU as Colonel as Deputy Ambassador to Prussia.