"Malicious attacks on the Soviet Union produce a natural feeling of indignation"

Yuri Andropov compresses an entire political grammar into one sentence: by branding criticisms of the Soviet Union as “malicious,” he assigns motive before engaging substance, and by calling indignation “natural,” he elevates an emotional reflex into a civic duty. The formulation shifts the terrain from evidence and policy to loyalty and morality. If the attack is malicious, then the target is righteous; if indignation is natural, then dissent from indignation appears deviant. The line constructs a moral community energized by grievance and vigilance, in which the state is both guardian and victim.

Set against the Cold War’s information battles, the sentence functions as preemptive delegitimization. External objections to human rights violations, the war in Afghanistan, or economic stagnation are not errors to be debated but assaults to be repelled. The language invites a rally-round-the-flag response and provides cover for reactive measures, censorship, surveillance, the policing of speech, that Andropov, as longtime KGB chief and later party leader, considered instruments of stability. It collapses the distinction between foreign critics and domestic dissidents: if malicious intent defines the critic, then internal criticism can be cast as collaboration with hostile forces. Emotion is operationalized, indignation becomes a policy lever.

There is a revealing tension here. To insist that indignation is natural is to deny that it might be manufactured through propaganda, yet it also betrays anxiety about legitimacy in a period of stagnation and overextension. A resilient system could afford to parse hostile claims; an insecure one needs to ascribe malice and mobilize sentiment. The phrase thus performs a double function: it fosters cohesion through grievance while narrowing permissible discourse. It also foreshadows the risks of such a posture: moralized defensiveness can harden into inflexibility, foreclosing the self-critique that reform would later require. As a political technology, the appeal is timeless, reminding how power converts criticism into proof of conspiracy and transforms emotion into an obligation to the state.