Leader of the Soyuz faction who nearly turned a parliamentary session into a constitutional coup
On 17 June 1991, as the concluding speaker of the session, Alksnis told the Supreme Soviet that the Union Treaty was unconstitutional and that deputies must back Pavlov's Cabinet because it 'works for the USSR, for the preservation of this state.'
A Soviet Air Force colonel of Latvian descent who became the most visible hardliner in the USSR Congress of People's Deputies. As co-chairman of the Soyuz faction, he demanded martial law, called for Gorbachev's ouster, and on 17 June 1991 urged an immediate vote on Pavlov's emergency-powers resolution, drawing the accusation that he was staging a constitutional coup. After the Soviet collapse he served two terms in the Russian Duma, was beaten by riot police defending the anti-Yeltsin parliament in 1993, and spent his last decades as an unreconstructed Soviet patriot.
Career Timeline
- 1973–1992Soviet Air Force service (senior engineer-inspector, Baltic MD Air Force HQ)
- 1989–1991People's Deputy of the USSR (Riga district No. 294)
- 1990–1991Deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR
- 1990–1991Co-chairman of the Soyuz faction
- 2000–2007Deputy, Russian State Duma (3rd and 4th convocations)
- 2013–2015Head of Tuchkovo urban settlement, Moscow Oblast