ABSTRACT
The first rupture of Brezhnev’s “live and let live” approach took place during the short tenure of Yuri Andropov. The former KGB chief had a thorough knowledge of the corruption and malfunctioning of the Brezhnev system, especially in the southern republics, and he set out to clean things up. Thus began a four-year purge which shook the Party nomenklatura in several republics, dislodging numerous Party leaders and their cliques, and “parachuting” Russian outsiders in to take command. The newcomers were selected the way kolkhoz chairmen had been chosen during collectivization, the main qualification being a reasonable degree of reliability and no ties to the local population, thus diminishing the opportunity for nepotism. At the same time, younger and as yet uncompromised native cadres were promoted to replace the coteries of purged leaders.
