Gennadi Yaneyev

Gennadiy Yanayev was Mikhail Gorbachev's choice to be vice-president of the Soviet Union, a move widely believed to be an appeasement of conservative elements of the Communist Party displeased with perestroika.

Yanayev was ringleader of the August 1991 coup d'etat against Gorbachev, and assumed the presidency when Gorbachev was falsely declared ill. On August 22 1991 he was arrested and charged with treason, later to be pardoned in 1994, in the blanket amnesty given to conspirators.

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