In 1984, Soviet ruler Yuri Andropov marked the May Day holiday in Moscow with a speech justifying the ill-fated Soviet assault on the Alaskan coastline as -- in his words -- "a necessary response to the imperialistic agenda of the capitalist powers". He also claimed, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, that the Alaska operation had been a success. But in reality, most of the Soviet beachheads had long since been wiped out and the few that remained were under punishing US air and naval bombardment. Battlefield Alaska by Chris OakleyFew people, even among Andropov's closest advisors, had any idea that Andropov was in the midst of a psyhchological breakdown or that this breakdown, combined with general distrust of the West and lingering anger over the "Able Archer" incident of 1983, had been one of the primary motivations for Andropov's misguided decision to go to war with the United States. Papers recovered from the Russian defense archives after the Soviet Union collapses would later reveal that Andropov had been convinced the United States was about to attack Siberia and this delusion had provoked him to order the landings in Alaska.

Within hours of Andropov's speech, his already severe problems would get exponentially worse; China, seeing an opportunity to readjust the Sino-Soviet border to its own advantage and strengthen ties with the Untied States, declared war on the Soviet Union and sent several of the PLA's top divisions into Siberia.