MOSCOW Gennadi I. Yanayev, a former Soviet apparatchik who was part of a short-lived coup in 1991 that hastened the fall of the Soviet Union, died Friday in Moscow, according to Russian news reports. He was 73.

Mr. Yanayev died in near obscurity, crushed by a wave of history he struggled in vain to resist. He had been ill for some time, but the cause of death was not immediately made public.

Mr. Yanayev was among eight powerful Soviet government hard-liners, including the head of the K.G.B. and the minister of defense, who seized power on Aug. 19, 1991, seeking to reverse the democratic reforms of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

As the conspirators declared a state of emergency, Mr. Yanayev named himself acting president. For three days the so-called State Committee for the State of Emergency held control, banning protests, shutting down independent media outlets and sending tanks rumbling through the streets  a nightmarish chain of events for those who had watched in awe the rapid transformations of the perestroika era with its dreams of democracy and freedom.