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Member of Group That Organized 1991 Coup Attempt In Moscow Dies


Aleksandr Tizyakov, the former chief of the Soviet Union's Association of State Industrial Facilities, has died at the age of 92. (file photo)
Aleksandr Tizyakov, the former chief of the Soviet Union's Association of State Industrial Facilities, has died at the age of 92. (file photo)

A member of so-called Gang of Eight that tried to take over the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991 has died in the city of Yekaterinburg.

The Yekaterinburg city administration said on January 28 that Aleksandr Tizyakov, the former chief of the Soviet Union's Association of State Industrial Facilities, died at the age of 92.

The cause and time of death was not made public.

Tizyakov was a member of the group of eight Soviet officials that placed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest in August 1991.

The group declared itself a provisional government or the State Committee for the Emergency Situation known by its Russian acronym, GKChP. The group also included three other senior Soviet political and military officials.

One "Gang of Eight" member, Soviet Interior Minister Boris Pugo, committed suicide shortly after the coup collapsed.

The 10 other men named as coup plotters were all granted amnesty by the State Duma on February 23, 1994 -- ending their 14-month trial, on high treason charges, by the military branch of the Supreme Court.

They went on to play various roles in politics and the private sector in post-communist Russia.

The leader of the group, Gennady Yanayev, who at the time declared himself acting President of the Soviet Union, died in Moscow at the age of 72 in September 2010.

Currently, only two members of the GKChP are still alive -- 94-year-old Dmitry Yazov, who in 1991 was the Soviet Union's Defense Minister, and 86-year-old Oleg Baklanov, who was then Deputy Chairman of the presidential Defense Council.

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