From KGB eavesdropping chief to head of leadership security, the man who pulled the coup's trigger
Gorbachev recalled: "Yeltsin felt uneasy, as if someone were eavesdropping. His instinct was correct. Plekhanov, head of the 9th Directorate, had prepared the room."
Andropov's personal secretary who rose to command the KGB 12th Department (eavesdropping, phone taps, mail interception) for thirteen years before heading the 9th Directorate guarding the party leadership. On Kryuchkov's orders, he pre-wired the Novo-Ogaryovo meeting room for 29 July 1991, and the recording of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev agreeing to purge the hardliners reached the plotters, detonating the August coup. On the day of the coup he flew to Foros and physically admitted the conspirators into Gorbachev's dacha; arrested when it collapsed, he was amnestied in 1994.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1965–1967Secretary to CPSU Central Committee Secretary Andropov
- 1970–1983Head, KGB 12th Department: eavesdropping, phone taps, mail interception
- 1983–1990Head, KGB 9th Directorate: protection of party and state leadership
- 1990–1991Head, KGB Protection Service; Collegium member
- 1991.7.29Wired the Novo-Ogaryovo meeting room; recording leaked to plotters
- 1991.8–1994Joined coup at Foros; arrested; Matrosskaya Tishina; amnestied
Related historical events
- 1991The Novo-Ogaryovo Process and the New Union Treatyhead of the KGB 9th Directorate who bugged the meeting roomOn Kryuchkov's orders, he bugged the July 29 meeting; the recording reached the hardliners and served as the trigger for the August coup.
- 1991The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSRParticipant in the coup plotAt Foros on 18 August 1991, he demanded that Gorbachev sign documents declaring an emergency and transferring power.
The Foros mission and detention after the coup
From 1983 through August 1991, Plekhanov headed the KGB's Ninth Directorate, responsible for protecting state and party leaders; from February 1990 it was called the Security Service. On 18 August 1991, he accompanied a delegation to Mikhail Gorbachev's dacha at Foros in Crimea. The other visitors were Valery Boldin, Oleg Baklanov, Oleg Shenin and Valentin Varennikov. In the run-up to the declaration of emergency intended to prevent the New Union Treaty from being signed the next day, they demanded that Gorbachev sign a document proclaiming a state of emergency and transferring power. He refused. Gorbachev was then kept under virtual house arrest, while in Moscow the State Committee for the State of Emergency announced on 19 August that it had assumed power and ordered strikes and demonstrations banned and the press censored. The committee failed to secure sufficient obedience from the military and security forces, and the coup collapsed on 21 August. Plekhanov was arrested in the case concerning the State Committee and held in Moscow's Matrosskaya Tishina prison; he was released from custody in December 1992. The State Duma adopted an amnesty for him on 23 February 1994. The case thus ended in an amnesty rather than a court judgment establishing criminal liability for the coup.