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Event

August 1991 coup attempt

The failed attempt by hard-line Communist officials to remove Gorbachev, 19–21 August 1991.

4 links, 4 backed by primary records

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Dates
19–21 Aug 1991
Place
Moscow
Also known as
August Coup, 1991 Soviet coup attempt
How each side tells it

According to United States government

According to Mikhail Gorbachev

According to Stanislav Shushkevich

On 19 August 1991 hard-line Communist officials tried to remove Mikhail Gorbachev. Boris Yeltsin led the resistance in Moscow and the coup collapsed within three days. Accounts from opposing sides, Washington’s and Gorbachev’s own, agree that it sealed the Union’s fate.

Connections 4

involved

caused

located in

Timeline 1 date
  1. 19–21 Aug 1991 August 1991 coup attempt
Proof 5 sources
  1. U.S.-Soviet Relations, 1981-1991 (Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations), U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Primary record
    Yeltsin turned back a coup against Gorbachev in August 1991, but in subsequent months consolidated authority over political and military institutions, and increasingly supported Russian independence and dissolution of the Soviet Union.
  2. The Collapse of the Soviet Union (Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations), U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian. Primary record
    Planned by hard-line Communists, the coup diminished Gorbachev’s power and propelled Yeltsin and the democratic forces to the forefront of Soviet and Russian politics.
    The unsuccessful August 1991 coup against Gorbachev sealed the fate of the Soviet Union.
    Boris Yeltsin makes a speech from atop a tank in front of the Russian parliament building in Moscow, U.S.S.R., Monday, Aug. 19, 1991.
  3. Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union, January 28, 1992, The American Presidency Project, UC Santa Barbara, 28 Jan 1992. Primary record
    And even now, months after the failed coup that doomed a failed system, I'm not sure we've absorbed the full impact, the full import of what happened.
  4. Mikhail Gorbachev's Resignation Speech, World History Commons, George Mason University, 25 Dec 1991. Primary record
    The August coup brought the general crisis to its ultimate limit. The most damaging thing about this crisis is the breakup of the statehood.
  5. Stanislau Shushkevich, First Leader Of Independent Belarus, Dead At 87, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 4 May 2022. Scholarship & press
    arguing that the Soviet Union had essentially collapsed following the failed hard-line coup against Gorbachev in August 1991
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