Life goes on for unrepenting 1991 coup leaders

The one exception is former Soviet interior minister Boris Pugo, who committed suicide three days after the August 19 coup collapsed and the curtain fell on the old Communist order.

All amnestied in 1994, the others still vociferously agree with former marshal and defense minister Dmitry Yazov, who ordered tanks into Moscow in a desparate bid to save the Soviet regime and insists he would "do it all over again" if he could.

Yazov, 78, was set free in 1993 and five years later became senior adviser to Russia's main arms exporter.

Today Yazov says that the putschists' program had a lot in common with what Putin is doing today.

Vladimir Kryuchkov, 76, was head of the feared Soviet secret services (KGB). After spending 17 months in jail, he returned to civilian life and wrote his memoirs.

He now co-heads a think-tank close to Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, who, after opposing Putin, recently turned into a Kremlin supporter.

Gennady Yanayev, 62, was Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's vice-president and briefly became acting president during the coup. He is now a consultant for the pension fund.

Valentin Pavlov, 62, then prime minister, went on to become a banker and later president of a company incorporated in the United States. However, that did not stop him from harshly criticizing liberal economic reforms in his book titled "Did we miss the opportunity?"

Vasili Starodubtsev, 69, was head of the Soviet Agrarian Union. After being freed from jail, he resumed his position as director of a kolkhoz (collective farm) and was elected Communist governor of the Tula region, south of Moscow, as well as a member of the Federation Council upper house of parliament.

Like all his fellow coup leaders, Starodubtsev rejects any accusation of high treason and demands that they be officially rehabilitated.

"What we were doing was defending our country against Gorbachev, Yeltsin and all their lot," he said.

A supporter of Putin, he thinks the Russian president "has already done many good things, like visiting Cuba, North Korea, China and India."

Oleg Baklanov, 69, was a secretary of the Soviet Communist Party's central committee. Today, he heads a Russian-Ukrainian friendship association and thinks that "the state should recognize that the putschists were historically and politically right."

Anatoly Lukyanov, 71, chaired the Soviet parliament, or Supreme Soviet. Although not officially one of the coup leaders, he was nonetheless arrested and sat in jail until December 1992. Former Gorbachev adviser Alexander Yakovlev describes him as one of the main instigators of the putsch, together with Kryuchkov.

He is now a Communist deputy in the State Duma lower house of parliament, and chairs the construction commission there.

He wrote several poetry books, including "Poems from Jail."