(Redirected from Boris Pugo)'Boris Karlovich Pugo' (
Latvian: 'Boriss Pugo',
Russian: Бори́с Ка́рлович Пу́го) (
February 19,
1937 –
August 22,
1991, in Moscow) was a
Latvian
Communist political figure.
Pugo was born in Kalinin,
USSR (now
Tver,
Russia) into a family of Latvian communists who had left Latvia following the loss of Communists in the Latvian independence war of
1918-
1920. His family returned to Latvia after Soviet Union occupied and annexed it in
1940.
Pugo graduated from
Riga Polytechnical in
1960 and worked in various
Komsomol,
Communist Party and Soviet government positions since then, both in Latvia and
Moscow. His positions between 1960 and
1984 included the
first secretary of the
Central Committee of Komsomol of
Latvian SSR, a secretary of the
Central Committee of Komsomol of USSR, the first secretary of
Riga City Committee of Communist Party and the chairman of
KGB in Latvia.
Pugo was the first secretary of the
Communist Party of the Latvian SSR from 1984 to
1988.
Between
1990 and 1991, he was the
Minister of the Interior Affairs of the USSR. He was a member of the
August Coup in 1991. He soon after committed
suicide. He shot his wife and himself as soon as he realized that the coup had failed.
Several media (including ''
Moscow Times'' and ''
TIME'') have cast doubts on the circumstances of his suicide, suggesting he might have been killed and the murder masked as a suicide.
External links
★
An article on Pugo's death in Moscow Times