Most academic attention on the Soviet system in the 1980s has focused on General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's dual policies of perestroika (reforms) and glasnost (openness) and how the Soviet system imploded. Far less studied, and certainly no less important, is the precise focus on the leaders of the Soviet Union and how their different approaches affected the political, economic and military course the country followed. By the early 1980s the Soviet leadership of the worldwide communist movement appeared to be running out of ideas. In the Kremlin was the aging and increasingly paranoid leader Leonid Brezhnev. He had ruled since 1964, but his involvement at a senior level extended to the period of Stalin’s rule. His tenure had seen an increase in military expenditure but this had been coupled with a growth in economic and industrial stagnation. The CIA keenly monitored his health and well-being, just as they had with his predecessors, and there was little surprise in late 1982 when he died.

A common aspect of the CIA's work was ‘Kremlinology’: the precise watching of individuals within the Soviet system, looking at the movers and shakers, studying those rising and falling politically and pondering what it all meant. With Brezhnev having been ill for so long there had been lots of attention and discussion about who might replace him. Brezhnev had surrounded himself with other aging, old Soviet hands. Would one of these be the successor, or might someone younger take the helm? Such questions were consequential not only for the Soviet Union itself, but also for the CIA and the policymakers it informed.

The debate cannot have lasted long. Within twenty-four hours of Brezhnev's death, his replacement had been chosen: Yuri Andropov. Andropov was no stranger to power, having risen up through the Soviet system. He was ambassador to Hungary in 1956 at the time of the uprising and forcibly urged a swift and brutal Soviet military response. This experience persuaded him that any opposition to Soviet rule should be dealt with in the harshest possible manner, and a year after taking over as head of the KGB in 1968, he urged that the Czechoslovak liberalisation movement under Alexander Dubček be crushed. He remained the head of the KGB until his appointment to replace Brezhnev in 1982.