Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. Supporters of USSR President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and RSFSR President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin at a food collection site for the defenders of the House of Soviets of the RSFSR on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment during the state of emergency declared during the attempted coup d'etat. In order to prevent the signing of the Union Treaty, which was 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). Valery Khristoforov/TASS