Word: yazov
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Some of the conspirators, notably Interior Minister Boris Pugo (the apparent suicide), Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov and KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, are said to have begun plotting in December 1990. If so, eight months later they still had not organized the most obvious, and essential, opening moves: arresting, or preferably killing, potential opponents (some supporters of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev operated unmolested from a Kremlin office almost next door to Yanayev's); assuring themselves of the loyalty of military units and then moving them into position to crush resistance speedily (army and KGB units flatly refused to storm the White...
...failed Soviet coup nearly dismantled the conference. The invitation was accepted last March by Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov, who became one of the coup organizers. Yazov was subsequently yanked from power, but the military men still made the trip. During their classes younger members of the group tended to accept the American explanation of recent world events. Older ones stuck with harder ideological positions. Such differences did not prevent the entire group from jumping up to do the "wave" at a Red Sox baseball game in their final week...
...army's trauma is not over. Yazov was arrested and faces trial. His protege, former Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Moiseyev, 52, played a role ambiguous enough to let Gorbachev name him acting Defense Minister shortly after the coup's collapse. That decision alarmed those who expected the reinstated President to clean house. Under pressure from Yeltsin, Gorbachev replaced Moiseyev one day later with an unambiguous reformer: Colonel General Yevgeni Shaposhnikov, 49, the commander of the air force who had refused to support the coup...
...deeper purge of conservatives in the military is almost sure to follow. General Valentin Varennikov, the commander of ground forces who reportedly shared in Yazov's plans was arrested; General Boris Gromov, a hero of the Afghan war thought to have been in charge of Interior Ministry forces in the coup, is another likely target. Officers and civilians in the military- industrial complex, which has fought Gorbachev's efforts to convert more defense plants to civilian purposes, can be expected to fall as well. Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, 68, former chief of staff of the Soviet armed forces and top military...
...made by a single individual. U.S. experts say Moscow's strategic nuclear "button" is in reality a two-part system, in which the Minister of Defense controls one half and the President the other. If Gorbachev's codes had wound up in the hands of Defense Minister Dmitri Yazov, a member of the junta, he would theoretically have had the wherewithal to order the missiles to be launched. But the codes are no more than a release authority, and the actual firing would still have required the cooperation of many people...