The August 1991 coup attempt was an effort by hardline Soviet officials to remove President Mikhail Gorbachev and stop the signing of a new union treaty that would have given more power to the republics. A group calling itself the State Committee on the State of Emergency, which included the vice president, the head of the KGB and the defense minister, put Gorbachev under house arrest at his holiday home in Crimea. Boris Yeltsin, the president of the Russian republic, rallied resistance in Moscow, speaking from a tank outside the Russian parliament building. The army did not carry out an assault, and the coup collapsed in three days. It destroyed the authority of the Communist Party and the Soviet center, and the Soviet Union was dissolved by the end of the year.
Before and after
- from 30 April 1991 to 15 May 1991Operation Ring
- from 27 June 1991 to 7 July 1991Ten-Day War
- from August 1991 to June 1992Battle of Osijek
- 14 August 1991Release of arXiv
- from 19 August 1991 to 21 August 19911991 Soviet coup d'état attempt
- from 25 August 1991 to 18 November 1991Battle of Vukovar
- from 2 September 1991 to 1 January 2023Republic of Artsakh
- from 14 September 1991 to 23 November 1991Battle of the Barracks
- 17 September 1991Release of Linux kernel
More in Wars, politics & history
- from 12 March 1947 to 25 December 1991Cold War
- 15 August 1947India and Pakistan become independent
- 10 December 1948Universal Declaration of Human Rights
- from 25 June 1950 to 27 July 1953Korean War
- from 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975Vietnam War
- 24 February 2022Full-scale Russo-Ukrainian war
The era
This moment belongs to the Contemporary world (1945 CE to today), the world since 1945. You can also browse everything in the 20th century.