Vladimir Putin & Yuri Andropov

(Both were top spies who became top leaders in Russia)

In 1999 Putin sanctioned a widespread celebration to mark the eighty-fifth anniversary of the birth of the late Yuri Andropov, who became secretary general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1982, after more than twenty years as head of the KGB.

He is still revered in the Russian secret service as the wisest leader the Soviet Union has ever had.

In December 1999 the memorial plaque in honor of Andropov that had been torn down in 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, was restored to the KGB/ FSB building in Lubyanka Square.

Five years later, on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of his birth, numerous books and articles appeared about how Andropov could and should have saved the Soviet Union from disintegration.

His untimely death in 1984, after barely eighteen months in power, derailed plans for reforms that would have taken the Soviet Union down the Chinese route and avoided perestroika and the collapse of the country.

Veterans of the intelligence services saw Putin as the reincarnation of Andropov, the man to restore the greatness of the Soviet Union from the ashes of the lost empire.

'All the Kremlin's Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin' by Mikhail Zygar
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XKQSJ8G