Images from Russia's Failed Coup

Anxiety was the underlying feeling of thousands of Muscovites who gathered on the capital's main squares on Aug. 19, 1991, when a group of Soviet hardliners attempted to wrest control of the country from the reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.



Believing Gorbachev's reforms would lead to the complete breakup of the Soviet Union, his opponents in government declared a state of emergency and established the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP). One of its first moves was to ban all newspapers in Moscow, except for those produced by nine Communist-Party controlled outlets.



Tanks and other armored units moved into Moscow. Boris Yeltsin, president of Russia — by then a sovereign state — described these actions as an unconstitutional coup d'etat. Muscovites began to erect barricades in front of the White House to protect it from the tanks being sent in by the hardliners.



After seeing the popular resistance, on Aug. 21 the GKChP ordered troops to move out from the city. One GKChP member committed suicide, and the others were arrested. The failed August putsch is generally seen as heralding the final collapse of the Soviet Union. ?