In April 1982 Yuri Andropov became the only chairman of the KGB to be elected secretary-general of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. He had established his reputation as a hard-liner during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and was appointed to lead the KGB in April 1967. An uncompromising cold warrior, Andropov had been incapacitated through ill health for more than a year before his death from renal failure in 1984.