and powerful member of the Emergency Committee but was not its mastermind; Kryuchkov has been described as the "heart and soul of the conspiracy". Yanayev only agreed to head the Emergency Committee on 20 August. Along with the other coup leaders, such as Valentin Pavlov and Boris Pugo for instance, Yanayev was dismissed as vice president and later jailed for his crimes against the Soviet state. In 1993, Moscow weekly Novy Vzglyad quoted Yanayev as admitting that he was drunk when he signed the decree which made him acting president, but saying that inebriation had not affected his judgment. In a 2008 interview, Yanayev said he regretted making himself acting President, further claiming that he was pressured by the more conservative members to sign the documents which declared his own presidency. He described the events of 1991 as a burden for the rest of his life. Later life and death Yanayev was released on recognizance not to leave in January 1993. He was pardoned in 1994. He would eventually become the head of the Department of History and International Relations of the Russian International Academy of Tourism. On 20 September 2010, he fell ill and was hospitalised at the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow, where he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He died on 24 September 2010. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) expressed their condolences to Yanayev's family. Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the CPRF, said of him: "Yanayev lived an interesting, complicated and worthy life." The CPRF officially praised him as "a highly professional specialist [...] a dear and trustworthy comrade". In another statement made by the CPRF, this time on their official website, they claimed: "If they had acted much more decisively, our unified country would have been preserved." He was buried at the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery, in a ceremony attended by several prominent CPRF members. He was survived by his wife and two daughters. Decorations and awards Order of the Red Banner of Labour, twice Order of the Badge of Honour, twice See also Index of Soviet Union-related articles References Further reading External links 1937 births 2010 deaths People from Nizhny Novgorod Oblast Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union members Expelled members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Russian communists State Committee on the State of Emergency members Deaths from lung cancer