Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. Supporters of USSR President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and RSFSR President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin during the distribution of gas masks on the barricades near the House of Soviets of the RSFSR on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment after the announcement of a state of emergency in the country during an attempted coup d'etat. In order to prevent the signing of the Union Treaty, which was supposed to replace the USSR with a new federation of sovereign states, representatives of the highest Soviet leadership, headed by USSR Vice President Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev, removed the president of the USSR from power and created the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP). Sergei Mamontov/TASS