Well, long story short, Andropov rose to some prominence after Stalin's purges, engaged in partisan activities in the war, was a KGB agent in Hungary up to and during the Hungarian revolution in 1956, and became head of the KGB in 1967.
As head of KGB, he was quite liberal, in that he allowed some dissidents to defect, and didn't so harshly punish others the number of people confined was also small by Soveit standards anyway.
He became General Secretary after Brezhnev died, and began fighting a war on the corruption within the old Brezhnev government.
While he maintained a similar foreign policy as his predecessors, he began looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the Soviet economy, which had begun lagging under Brezhnev. Mainly he looked for inefficiencies and laziness, including famous campaigns to drive people caught in movie theatres and other public places during the day (when they were supposed to be working). He also promoted an anti-alcohol campaign (which has and still does cause Russia much grief), though he never went so far as to ban it, as Gorbachev did.
He seemed a hardline liberal sort of character. He was strict, but not excessively mean (as the dissidents part shows). He wanted slow reform, not the "shock therapy" that Gorbachev had vied for. I wonder, just like many here wonder about what would happen if Lenin/Stalin had survived longer, what would happen if Andropov survived longer?
I personally believe, that, being tougher than Gorbachev, Andropov could have allowed for the continued existence of the USSR.