The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt (19–21 August 1991), also known as the August Putsch or August Coup (Russian: Августовский путч, Translit: Avgustovsky Putch), was an attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup leaders were hard-line members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) who were opposed to Gorbachev's reform program and the ...
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The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt (19–21 August 1991), also known as the August Putsch or August Coup (Russian: Августовский путч, Translit: Avgustovsky Putch), was an attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup leaders were hard-line members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) who were opposed to Gorbachev's reform program and the new union treaty that he had negotiated which decentralised much of the central government's power to the republics. They were opposed, mainly in Moscow, by a short but effective campaign of civil resistance. Although the coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to government, the event destabilised the Soviet Union and is widely considered to have contributed to both the demise of the CPSU and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Since assuming power in 1985, Gorbachev had embarked on an ambitious program of reform, embodied in...
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