August coup

(1991)

   Also known as the August Putsch. Organized by hard-liners within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) with support of certain members of the military and the KGB, the coup was a last-ditch effort to reverse the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev.

   Since 1990, Gorbachev had been forced to grant increasing control to the republican leaders, including Boris Yeltsin, while simultaneously curtailing the influence of the CPSU. The steady erosion of the Soviet state generated intense animosity among the older generation of Soviet leaders who saw Gorbachev as nothing more than a funeral director of the Marxist-Leninist experiment. The immediate catalyst for the putsch was the impending New Union Treaty, which would have significantly restructured the relationship between the various republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). With Gorbachev on vacation at his dacha in Crimea and Yeltsin in Kazakhstan for consultations with President Nursultan Nazarbayev, the putschists, led by Vice President of the Soviet Union Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov, and Minister of Interior Affairs Boris Pugo, established the State Committee of the State of Emergency (Gosudarstvennyi komitet po chrezvychainomu polozheniiu or GKChP) to deal with challenges to their authority. They also ordered hundreds of thousands of handcuffs and arrest papers for the coming unrest. The GKChP soon declared Gorbachev to be “ill,” and chose Yanayev to replace him.

   Beginning on 19 August, they took control of mainstream media outlets and ordered troops into Moscow. However, the failure of the coup plotters to detain Yeltsin upon his return from Kazakhstan undermined their effectiveness. The Russian president rallied popular sentiment against the coup, resulting in large-scale demonstrations against the actions of the GKChP, and gained the support of certain military figures. Lacking unity and facing a popular backlash, the putschists ultimately ordered the troops out of the capital and agreed to consultations with Gorbachev. On 22 August, most of the plotters were arrested; Pugo committed suicide shortly thereafter. Two days later, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the CPSU amid widespread attacks on the authority and symbols of the party’s control of the Soviet state.

   The failure of the coup dramatically increased support for independence among those union republics that had previously favored the creation of a new union and depleted lingering support for the Communists among most ordinary Russians. Within a few months, Yeltsin outlawed the CPSU in Russia, before presiding over the dissolution of the Soviet Union in December.

   See also All-Union Referendum.