| State Committee of the State of Emergency Государственный комитет по черезвычайному положению |
|
|---|---|
| Formation | August 1991 |
| Extinction | 22 August 1991 |
| Type | Self-declared provisional government |
| Legal status | Dissolved by the Russian SFSR and Soviet Union |
| Purpose/focus | Prevention of the New Union Treaty signing, governance during 6-months state of emergency |
| Headquarters | Moscow Kremlin, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union[1][2] |
| Location | Soviet Union |
| Region served |
Soviet Union
|
| Official languages | Russian |
| Chairman | Gennady Yanayev |
| Affiliations | KGB Soviet Army Soviet Ministry on Internal Affairs |
The State Committee on the State of Emergency (Russian: Государственный комитет по чрезвычайному положению, ГКЧП) was a group of eight high-level officials within the Soviet government, the Communist party and the KGB who attempted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev on 18 August 1991. Within two days, by 20 August 1991, the attempted coup collapsed.
Contents |
The eight members were:
Pugo shot himself to avoid arrest, while the other seven members were arrested.
The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt (19–21 August 1991), was an attempt by a Gang of Eight to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The group of eight were hard-line members of the Communist Party (CPSU) who were opposed to Gorbachev's reform program and the new union treaty that he had negotiated which dispersed much of the central government's power to the republics. Although the coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to government, the event destabilised the Soviet Union and is widely considered to have helped in bringing about both the demise of the Communist Party and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Afterwards, members of the Gang of Eight were arrested.
On 15 December 1992 over a year after the incident a criminal case of 144 volumes was sent to the Military Collegiate of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation from the Prosecutor General. Anatoliy Ukolov as a deputy chairman of the Collegiate was given the case for a revision. On 26 January 1993 was assigned as a hearing for the criminal case. Those that were to be prosecuted for involvement included the aforementioned eight plus three others:
The trials lasted for 14 months from 14 April 1993 until 1 March 1994. The trials were open to public and press media, however the foreign press media did not participate as there were no space for them left in the courtroom. A prosecution commission was assigned and consisted of nine people and headed by Denisov, who was a Deputy Prosecutor General. The following defense attorneys were hired: Genri Reznik (Shenin), Genrikh Padva, Yuriy Ivanov (Kryuchkov), Dmitriy Shteinberg (Varennikov), and others. In total there were 17 defense attorneys. The court questioning only started on 30 November 1993 due to various procrastination techniques utilized by the defense. Questioning was conducted mainly to four people: Yazov, Kryuchkov, Shenin, and Varennikov, and lasted a couple of weeks.
On 23 February 1994 the State Duma issued a political and economic amnesty. On 1 March 1994 the case was closed as all 11 prosecuted accepted amnesty. Varennikov also accepted amnesty at first under the condition that Mikhail Gorbachev would be prosecuted next. He accused Gorbachev of leading the country to the political disaster that it was in. The court, of course, did not open a new case by his petition, but did send his inquiry to the Prosecutor General's office. The Prosecutor General's office chose not to follow up on Varennikov's petition as, according to Anatoliy Ukolov, no case has appeared in that regard.
After 10 days, however, the Presidium of the Supreme Court supported the prosecution in court by the protest of Denisov and the case was reopened. The reason for that was the procedural infringements connected with amnesty. The case should not have been closed prior to carry out the decision whether or not the accused were guilty and only then present the option of amnesty. The Presidium of the Supreme Court arranged a new hearing and assigned a new judge whom become Viktor Aleksandrovich Yaskin. He conducted the case review by already newly accepted court procedures. Yaskin gathered the prosecuted once again and asked them again if they wish to accept the amnesty. All, but Varennikov accepted it. So the case continued on only with participation of Varennikov. That case finished in full acquittance of the last as he was a subordinated to the Minister of Defense and was executing his orders.
The main organizers were identified as Kryuchkov, Yazov, Shenin, and Pavlov.
According to Vzglyad the occurrence of the August putsch Ukolov blames on Mikhail Gorbachev by implying that Gorbachev should not have taken his vacation. However, in interview to Komsomol Pravda Ukolov also mentioned how the members of GKChP chose not to follow the letter of law, but rather to take the situation in their own hands.
|
||||||||||||||||