8 Men Grasp the Reins of Soviet Power : Leadership: Some of the Emergency Committee members are little known except to Kremlinologists.

Eight men, some previously little known to all but the most assiduous of Kremlinologists, or specialists on Soviet politics, have now placed themselves at the helm of the world’s other superpower, claiming to exercise all power.

Although the precise involvement of the increasingly conservative Soviet Communist Party with the Emergency Committee created by the eight is still shadowy, many of the committee’s members occupy positions in the top party hierarchy.

Additionally, many hold the supreme spot in institutions known to be hostile to some or many of the changes sought over the past 6 1/2 years by Mikhail S. Gorbachev--for example, the KGB, Soviet armed forces and the complex of state-run and collective farms.

Others have spent a good part of their careers managing or being involved with the country’s military-industrial complex. In their first public statements Monday, they expressed alarm at some of the fruits of Gorbachev’s perestroika policy--from the sputtering and drop of national economic output to the rash of pornography for sale in street kiosks.

“The situation has been spinning out of control,” said Gennady I. Yanayev, the Soviet vice president who was proclaimed “acting president” to replace Gorbachev on Monday. The committee acted to counter “a real threat to the further development and survival of the U.S.S.R,” Yanayev said.

He denied that the committee’s assumption of power was a dictatorship, saying he only assumed the office of president on an “interim basis.” He added, “I believe that, as the situation develops, we will hold elections on a democratic basis.”

The committee’s priority tasks, Yanayev said, will be arresting the free fall of the economy to ensure food, housing and energy supplies for the populace as winter nears.

Its members are:

GENNADY I. YANAYEV

Yanayev, 53, had been vice president for less than a year. Gorbachev fought hard last December to get Yanayev into the newly created office, forcing unwilling members of the Congress of People’s Deputies (Parliament) to recast their votes after an initial rejection.

In a speech after his nomination, Yanayev declared himself “a Communist to the depths of my soul.” In a January poll, 58% of respondents said they knew nothing about Yanayev, a former trade union leader. A mere 5% felt he was the man for the job.

VLADIMIR A. KRYUCHKOV

Chairman of the Committee for State Security, or KGB, he was appointed by Gorbachev in October, 1988, a choice originally interpreted by Western and Soviet experts as a sign of the downgrading of the agency. He replaced hard-line Viktor Chebrikov, a move seen as a successful ploy by Gorbachev to gain power over the agency, which was considered an obstacle to reforms.

However, although the agency strived under his tutelage to present itself as a civilized member of the new Soviet society, Kryuchkov, 67, has at times acted in a manner that fully evokes the old days. Last December, he accused the CIA of plotting sabotage on a grand scale, saying the agency “has been working on plans for optimizing hostile activities aimed at the breakup of Soviet society and disorganization of the socialist economy,” as well as “training spies it planned to position in key spots in the Soviet government responsible for managing the economy.”

Not long after his appointment, Kryuchkov said that “our duty now is not to allow any dictatorship but to act within the framework of the law.” He added, however, that “if things went wrong, the question of extraordinary measures might be put on the agenda.” In 1990, he suggested such measures were necessary in economics.

In June, Kryuchkov and Soviet interior and defense ministers--who now are all members of the Emergency Committee--addressed a closed Supreme Soviet session in an attempt to grant Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov emergency powers to lift the nation out of crisis.

DMITRI T. YAZOV

Born in 1923 in the Siberian city of Omsk, Soviet Defense Minister Yazov is a career officer who fought in World War II at age 18. He gained his current post in May, 1987, after a West German teen-ager humiliated his predecessor by flying a Cessna through Soviet air defenses and landing in Red Square. Yazov was a surprise appointee, a little-known junior military leader who was deputy defense minister for personnel.

Awarded marshal’s stars by Gorbachev, Yazov said in an interview last year that the 4-million-member Soviet armed forces owed allegiance to just one person. “The army is subjugated to one person, the U.S.S.R. president, who is concurrently chairman of the Defense Council and commander in chief,” he said.

After the fact, Yazov backed January’s seizure by Soviet soldiers of a television tower in Vilnius, Lithuania, an operation in which 13 unarmed civilians were killed. But like Pugo, he disavowed any involvement in the bloodshed.

Yazov worried publicly this year over the soundness of the Soviet armed forces, as independence and autonomy movements in the republics have eaten into conscription. Speaking in support of Prime Minister Pavlov’s request for emergency powers earlier this summer, Yazov said that as a result of local separatist campaigns and economic collapse of the country, “soon there will be no Soviet armed forces.”

VALENTIN S. PAVLOV

Now prime minister, Pavlov, 53, began his career 32 years ago as a tax inspector. He was finance minister until his appointment by Gorbachev to replace Nikolai I. Ryzhkov as head of the Soviet government in January. At the time, Gorbachev lauded him as “a major financier and economist with great experience and character, capable of bearing the burden of responsibility.”

Within a few weeks, though, much of the world was looking askance at Pavlov. In an interview, he accused unidentified Western business figures of plotting to ruin the Soviet economy. It was a chilling, Stalinist accusation from the leader of a government that had been increasingly on warmer terms with the West.

When Gorbachev blocked the attempt by hard-liners two months ago to provide the prime minister with far greater emergency powers, some observers felt the end was near for Pavlov. But he made no secret of his opposition to Gorbachev’s plans for a national Union Treaty, asserting only last week that the final document accepted by the president could lead to the breakup of the national economic wealth.

This spring, Pavlov’s popularity, already low, plummeted further when he suddenly ordered all 50-ruble and 100-ruble banknotes withdrawn from circulation. The measure, supposedly intended to confiscate ill-gotten riches of criminals, resulted in the loss of many citizens’ life savings.

BORIS K. PUGO

A 54-year-old Latvian born in Russia, Pugo waged war on dissidents as chairman of the Latvian KGB from 1980-84. After being forced from his position as head of the Latvian Communist Party in 1988 during the growth of the independence movement, Pugo became chairman of the Communist Party Control Commission, in charge of ensuring discipline in party ranks.

Late last year, he was appointed interior minister, in charge of Soviet police, as part of a crackdown on crime and corruption proclaimed by Gorbachev. But many Soviets viewed Pugo’s new job as proof that hard-line Communist elements were in ascendancy. Pugo’s predecessor, liberal Vadim V. Bakatin, was hounded out of office by conservatives, who blamed him personally for a steady rise in the crime rate since 1988 and for lack of a solution to bloodshed in the southern republics.

Upon his appointment, Pugo declared, “the present situation in the Soviet Union calls for decisive measures to restore law and order.” Pugo has been blamed by pro-independence militants in the Baltic states for ordering attacks in Latvia and Lithuania by elite Interior Ministry forces known as “black berets,” but he denied giving the orders.

VASILY A. STARODUBTSEV

As head of the Soviet Peasants Union since 1990, Starodubtsev has loudly championed the system of state and collective farms created by dictator Josef Stalin, which critics say is a straitjacket that impedes free growth of Soviet farming.

Chairman of a large collective farm in Tula region south of Moscow since 1963, Starodubtsev is also a member of the Congress of People’s Deputies. An enemy of land reform--he once said, “I am categorically against the selling of land”--he has long had strained relations with Gorbachev. In 1990, when Starodubtsev spoke out against leaseholding, then being touted by the Soviet leadership as a solution to the chronically underproducing agricultural sector, Gorbachev commented, “What Starodubtsev wants is a return backwards. . . . You want to return us to the old administrative command system.”

Starodubtsev, 59, became a member of the Communist Party’s policy-making Central Committee a little over a year ago. An ethnic Russian from Lipetsk, he has been president of the federal union of collective farms since 1986.

ALEXANDER I. TIZYAKOV

Named to the committee as the head of the Assn. of State Enterprises and Industrial Facilities, 59-year-old Tizyakov is also deputy chairman of the Scientific Industrial Committee, led by liberal Arkady Volsky. A die-hard conservative, Tizyakov was brought up through party ranks by former Prime Minister Ryzhkov in late 1990 and for a time had close access to Gorbachev.

This ended when Tizyakov, during a conference on privatization, delivered a hard-hitting speech warning of the dire consequences of moves toward a free market. Gorbachev rudely interrupted him several times, and he disappeared from the higher echelons of power until now. Tizyakov and Starodubtsev were among the signatories of an appeal to “save the country,” published by the conservative daily paper Sovietskaya Rossiya on July 23.

OLEG D. BAKLANOV

First deputy to the chairman of the Soviet Defense Council, a post formerly occupied by Mikhail S. Gorbachev as Soviet president. With strong ties to the military-industrial complex, Baklanov, 59, was appointed head of the Ministry of General Machine Building in 1983. Western intelligence specialists say this ministry has traditionally been a cover for the assembly of Soviet ICBMs, booster rockets and space vehicles.

As Communist Party secretary in 1990, Baklanov spoke in support of Gorbachev, saying: “Favorable changes brought about in the international situation by our peace initiatives set out by Mikhail Gorbachev created good prerequisites for a more active participation of the defense industry sector in the solution of the social tasks of society.”

He has a curiously ambivalent attitude toward democratic developments in Soviet politics. On the one hand, he said that “grass-roots decision-making is a key condition for party bodies both with ideas and people, taking into account their political and human qualities as well as their competence.” On the other, he said, “the party will not lessen discipline within its ranks.”

He seems to advocate a healthy give-and-take of opinions (“We can only build our common house together”) but also stresses the necessity of discipline, which he calls “of special importance in the struggle for influence on the masses.” In June, 1990, he told Pravda that “the democratic steps taken both in the construction of the party and in the life of the people bear an irreversible character.” But that same year, he warned that “neither the army nor the Interior Ministry (police) are excluded in our society from the political and social life of the country.”

Steven Gutterman, a researcher in The Times’ Moscow bureau, conducted research for this story.