Word: yazov
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...yielded his powers temporarily to Yanayev. An hour later, TASS announced the formation of the eight-member State Committee for the State of Emergency, ostensibly headed by Yanayev. Actually, this gray and ineffectual apparatchik was only a figurehead; the real power probably was held by Kryuchkov, Pugo and Yazov, plus possibly lesser-known figures. Some of Russian republic president Boris Yeltsin's aides later fingered Baklanov as the chief plotter. The committee announced that it would rule by decree for six months, and began setting up some of the machinery of dictatorship. All newspapers except for nine pro-coup sheets...
Otherwise, nothing happened. During the daylight hours Tuesday, Ruslan Khasbulatov, first deputy chairman of the supreme soviet of the Russian Federation and a close Yeltsin adviser, was on the phone to KGB chief Kryuchkov and Defense Minister Yazov. He asked them point-blank if the junta planned to storm the White House. "Yazov did not deny it," he reported. Late Tuesday night and again Wednesday morning, Gennadi Burbulis, another Yeltsin aide, spoke twice more with Kryuchkov. Finally Kryuchkov promised, "You can sleep soundly." There would be no shoot...
...tried to flee the capital on Wednesday is still not entirely clear. Pugo, for example, was originally rumored to be aboard a plane headed for Central Asia, but in fact was soon admitted to a Moscow hospital with gunshot wounds, apparently self-inflicted, from which he died. Kryuchkov and Yazov, however, did get to Vnukovo Airport ahead of their pursuers from Yeltsin's headquarters, and hopped a plane for Gorbachev's resort. They were accompanied by Anatoli Lukyanov, chairman of the Soviet parliament. Though he is an old friend and law-school classmate of Gorbachev's, Lukyanov played at best...
Possibly Kryuchkov and Yazov hoped to negotiate with Gorbachev an end to the coup that would preserve some of their power. Or maybe they simply intended to beg for forgiveness and leniency. Rutskoi and his friends, however, feared they might want to kill the Soviet President. The thought that some of the plotters might try to execute him in a last attempt to save the coup occurred to Gorbachev as well. One of his first calls on Wednesday was to the chief of his personal guard at the Kremlin, working out arrangements to guarantee his safety on a return...
When Kryuchkov and Yazov arrived at his dacha, Gorbachev refused to see them; he demanded that they be arrested (Lukyanov was not arrested but was suspended from his job pending an investigation). Rutskoi and his gun-toting party, who got to the dacha shortly after, were delighted to do that job. They frisked both Kryuchkov and Yazov; Kryuchkov offered no resistance, but the Defense Minister grumbled (neither was armed). Even then Rutskoi and his companions were worried that other plotters might try something. "We told the airport to prepare two planes to mislead the scoundrels," Rutskoi later said on Soviet...