Gennady Yanayev, who seized power from Mikhail Gorbachev, is a veteran Communist Party official who initially failed to get the required votes at a Congress of People's Deputies for the vice presidency.
"I want to work next to a person I trust completely," Gorbachev said Dec. 27 when he nominated Yanayev as his vice presidential candidate. Answering complaints by liberal doubters that they did not know Yanayev, Gorbachev said: "You will get acquainted with him."Yanayev, 53, was recently most visible when he went to the Ukraine with President Bush during the American chief executive's six-hour visit on Aug. 1 to Kiev, the capital of the Ukrainian republic.
Yanayev, an ethnic Russian, rose through the Komsomol, or Young Communist League, and the official Communist trade union organization.
He was head of the official trade unions when he was chosen for the vice presidency by Gorbachev and then resubmitted as a candidate for the post when the liberals at the Congress turned him down by 31 votes.
Yanayev said at the time he had considered withdrawing his candidacy, but Gorbachev prevailed on him to stay in the running.
"Of course it would have been better to be elected on the first round," Yanayev said at the time. "But I think that the more difficult the victory, the more satisfying the result."
The trade unions and the Kom-somol in which the hard-line Yan-ayev won his spurs were two of the most conservative Communist organizations and two of the key tentacles by which the Party reached into the workplace and the schools in its totalitarian control.
Ironically, both the official trade unions and Komsomol, Yanayev's stepping stones, have been emasculated by Gorbachev's reforms.
Through his Komsomol contacts, Yanayev became familiar with the leaders of many nations. As vice president under Gorba-chev, he was a briefly glimpsed gray figure most frequently used to escort foreign guests to the airport and greet them upon arrival.
The post of Soviet vice president was created in December after the creation of Gorbachev's own special presidency with additional powers, to which he was elected by the Congress also in a struggle.
Gorbachev said when he created the vice president's post that the officeholder "will be involved with a large range of questions tied to the realization of domestic and foreign affairs."
In the most virulent criticism of Yanayev's election in December, Asgimantas Cherkuolis, a deputy from Lithuania, labeled Yanayev "a carbon copy of other high-level apparatchiks - sleek, brilliant and out of touch with reality."
Yanayev told reporters after his December election: "The most difficult task will be recognizing human pain and suffering, and taking quick and adequate steps to alleviate it."
His steps in taking power as the head of a governing committee were indeed quick, but it remains to be seen how adequate they will be if he tries to roll back Gorba-chev's political and economic reforms.