Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the fifth General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later. Andropov was the son of a railway official Vladimir Konstantinovich Andropov, who was a member of a Don Cossack noble family. His mother was Yevgenia Karlovna Fleckenstein, a daughter of a wealthy Moscow businessman, Karl Franzovich Fleckenstein, a German Russian from Vyborg. A nobleman and revolutionary named Sergei Vasilevich Andropov (1873-1955) was a relative. He was educated at the Rybinsk Water Transport Technical College before he joined Komsomol in 1930. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1939 and was First Secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol in the Soviet Karelo-Finnish Republic from 1940 to 1944. During World War II, Andropov took part in partisan guerrilla activities.