Yanayev's political career spanned the rules of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko, and culminated during the Gorbachev years.

After three days, the coup collapsed, in part due to Western backing of Boris Yeltsin; during its brief grip of power, Yanayev was made Acting President of the Soviet Union.

Yanayev was born on 26 August 1937 in the town of Perevoz, Gorky Oblast during the administration of Joseph Stalin as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

He was Gorbachev's third choice for the post; Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev had turned the offer down.

[11] Shortly after taking office, Yanayev joined a group of more conservative Communist politicians, led by KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, who hoped to persuade Gorbachev to declare a state of emergency.

On that same day the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) issued the coup plotters' decree, which stated: "Owing to the conditions of his health, Mikhail Gorbachev is no longer capable of carrying on the duties of the President of the USSR.

"[14] The decree made references to the growing problems facing the country such as ethnic tensions, political confrontations and chaos, which according to the coup leaders threatened the very existence of Soviet life and the territorial integrity of the USSR.

In addition, Yanayev and the rest of the state committee ordered the Cabinet of Ministers to alter the then current five-year plan to relieve the housing shortage.

[19] On August 21, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, chaired by the heads of the chambers of the union parliament, adopted a resolution in which it declared illegal the actual dismissal of President Gorbachev from his duties and the transfer of them to the country's vice-president and, in this regard, demanded that Vice-President Yanayev cancel the decrees and emergency orders based on them.

[21] According to some historians, Yanayev was the most visible and powerful member of the Emergency Committee but was not its mastermind; Kryuchkov has been described as the "heart and soul of the conspiracy".

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.

[22] 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.