Gennady Yanayev

Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev (Russian: Геннадий Иванович Янаев; 26 August 1937 – 24 September 2010) was a Soviet politician and disputed President of the Soviet Union for three days. Yanayev's political career spanned the rules of Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko and culminated during the Mikhail Gorbachev years. Yanayev was born in Perevoz, Gorky Oblast. After years in local politics, he rose to prominence as Chairman of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, but he also held other lesser posts such as deputy of the Union of Soviet Societies for Friendship and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries.

Due to his chairmanship of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, in 1990 he gained a seat in the 28th Politburo and Secretary of the Central Committee. Later that year, on 27 December, with the help of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yanayev was elected the first, and only, Vice President of the Soviet Union. Having growing doubts about where Gorbachev's reforms were leading, Yanayev started working with, and eventually formally leading, the State Committee on the State of Emergency, the group which deposed Gorbachev during the August 1991 coup d'état attempt. After three days, the coup collapsed. During its brief grip of power, Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union. He was then arrested for his role in the coup, but in 1994 he was pardoned. He spent the rest of his life working in the Russian tourism administration until his death on 24 September 2010.