Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. City residents who came to pay tribute to the memory of the deceased activists Dmitry Alekseevich Komar, Ilya Maratovich Krichevsky and Vladimir Aleksandrovich Usov at the Tchaikovsky Tunnel on the Garden Ring, where on the night of August 20-21, 1991, supporters of the President of the USSR M. S. Gorbachev tried to stop a column of armored vehicles of the Taman Division, which was carrying out the orders of the State Emergency Committee. 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 the Vice President of the USSR Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev, removed the President of the USSR Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev from power and created the State Emergency Committee. Gennady Khamelyanin/TASS