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He said she also claimed to be the daughter of former Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.

The former Soviet Union was famous for neglecting to mention when its leaders are sick or dead — think Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, secretly sick and soon deceased one after the other in the 1980s.

When Reagan decided to send a personal, handwritten letter to Soviet leader Yuri Andropov, Shultz was not informed.

Brezhnev died in 1982, and relations withered under successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, who were in ill health and died after less than 15 months in office.

I remember, after the deaths of the brutal Leonid Brezhnev and the forgettable Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko, that we weren’t really sure what to expect from Mr. Gorbachev.