Valentin Sergeyevich Pavlov was a Soviet official who became a Russian banker following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Born in the city of Moscow, then part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Pavlov began his political career in the Ministry of Finance in 1959. Later, during the Brezhnev Era, he became head of the Financial Department of the State Planning Committee. Pavlov was appointed to the post of Chairman of the State Committee on Prices during the Gorbachev Era, and later became Minister of Finance in Nikolai Ryzhkov's second government. He went on to succeed Ryzhkov as head of government in the newly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union.
The president of the Soviet Union, officially the president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, abbreviated as president of the USSR, was the head of state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 15 March 1990 to 25 December 1991.
Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov is a Russian politician who has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and served as Member of the State Duma since 1993. He is also the Chair of the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU) since 2001. Zyuganov ran for President of Russia four times, most controversially in 1996, when he lost in the second round to Boris Yeltsin per official results.
Nikolai Ivanovich Ryzhkov was a Russian politician. He served as the last Chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers. Responsible for the cultural and economic administration of the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev era, Ryzhkov was succeeded as premier by Valentin Pavlov in 1991. The same year, he lost his seat on the Presidential Council, going on to become Boris Yeltsin's leading opponent in the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) 1991 presidential election. He was also the last surviving Premier of the Soviet Union, following the death of Ivan Silayev on 8 February 2023.
The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, also known as the August Coup, was a failed attempt by hardliners of the Soviet Union's Communist Party to forcibly seize control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Soviet President and General Secretary of the Communist Party at the time. The coup leaders consisted of top military and civilian officials, including Vice President Gennady Yanayev, who together formed the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP). They opposed Gorbachev's reform program, were angry at the loss of control over Eastern European states and fearful of the USSR's New Union Treaty which was on the verge of being signed. The treaty was to decentralize much of the central Soviet government's power and distribute it among its fifteen republics.
Alexander Nikolayevich Yakovlev was a Soviet and Russian politician, diplomat, and historian. A member of the Politburo and Secretariat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union throughout the 1980s, he was termed the "godfather of glasnost", and was the intellectual force behind Mikhail Gorbachev's reform programme of glasnost and perestroika.
Sergey Fyodorovich Akhromeyev was a Soviet military figure, Hero of the Soviet Union (1982) and Marshal of the Soviet Union (1983).
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Kryuchkov was a Soviet lawyer, diplomat, and head of the KGB, member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU.
The State Committee on the State of Emergency, abbreviated as SCSE, was a self-proclaimed political body in the Soviet Union that existed from 19 to 21 August 1991. It included a group of eight high-level Soviet officials within the Soviet government, the Communist Party, and the KGB, who attempted a coup d'état against Mikhail Gorbachev on 19 August 1991. The American publicist Georges Obolensky called it the Gang of Eight. The coup ultimately failed, with the provisional government collapsing by 22 August 1991 and several of the conspirators being prosecuted by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.
Anatoly Ivanovich Lukyanov was a Russian Communist politician who was the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR between 15 March 1990 and 4 September 1991. One of the founders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) in 1993, he was described by its leader Gennady Zyuganov as having been the Deng Xiaoping of the party. He published books of poetry under his own name and under the pseudonyms Osenev (Осенев) and Dneprov (Днепров).
Oleg Semyonovich Shenin was the leader of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Shenin), which should not be confused with the larger UCP-CPSU.
Vasily Alexandrovich Starodubtsev was a Soviet and Russian politician and governor of Tula Oblast from 1997 to 2005. He was also the Chairman of the Peasants Union of the USSR, during which he served as a member of the State Committee on the State of Emergency in the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt. He was a leader of the Agrarian Party of Russia.
The Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was the executive and administrative organ of the highest body of state authority, the All-Union Supreme Soviet. It was formed on 30 December 1922 and abolished on 26 December 1991. The government was headed by a chairman, most commonly referred to as the premier of the Soviet Union, and several deputy chairmen throughout its existence. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), as "The leading and guiding force of Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system" per Article 6 of the state constitution, controlled the government by holding a two-thirds majority in the All-Union Supreme Soviet. The government underwent several name changes throughout its history, and was known as the Council of People's Commissars from 1922 to 1946, the Council of Ministers from 1946 to 1991, the Cabinet of Ministers from January to August 1991 and the Committee on the Operational Management of the National Economy from August to December 1991.
The Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union was the highest body of state authority of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991.
Following the August 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, the State Council of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) (Russian: Государственный Совет СССР), but also known as the State Soviet, was formed on 5 September 1991 and was designed to be one of the most important government offices in Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union. The members of the council consisted of the President of the Soviet Union, and highest officials (which typically was presidents of their republics) from the Soviet Union's republics. During the period of transition it was the highest organ of state power, having the power to elect a prime minister, or a person who would take Gorbachev's place if absent; the office of Vice President of the Soviet Union had been abolished following the failed August Coup that very same year.
The following lists events that happened during 1991 in the Soviet Union and Russia.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a communist political party in Russia that officially adheres to Marxist–Leninist philosophy. It is the second-largest political party in Russia after United Russia. The youth organisation of the party is the Leninist Young Communist League.
Yeltsin. Three Days in August is a political drama directed by Alexander Mokhov of the Moscow events of August 1991.
Gennady Maksimovich Khodyrev is a Soviet and Russian statesman, former Governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and the Minister for Antimonopoly Policy.
