He died of a heart attack Friday at his dacha near Moscow.
Barannikov, a career policeman, was 54. In the heady days of Russia's struggle for sovereignty within the former Soviet Union, he was appointed Russia's interior minister by Boris Yeltsin, then head of the republic's Supreme Soviet.
He went on to head the Soviet Interior Ministry in 1991 and then, after the fall of the Soviet Union, he became Yeltsin's security minister in command of both the police and the former KGB.
Yeltsin fired Barannikov in July 1993 when the general was implicated in a corruption scandal that involved his wife's trips abroad at the expense of a Swiss company run by a Russian emigr?.
Barannikov backed the rebellious vice president Alexander Rutskoi and parliament speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov in 1993, and the anti-Yeltsin parliament reinstated him as security minister.
After the coup failed, Yeltsin disbanded the Security Ministry and had Barannikov jailed on charges of organizing mass disturbances. The former minister spent four months in Lefortovo prison and was freed after the newly elected State Duma amnestied the coup leaders in February 1994. While in jail, Barannikov was plagued by health problems and was on one occasion moved to a hospital for heart treatment.
While other 1993 coup leaders have remained active in politics, Barannikov all but disappeared from public view after his release.
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