Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. Packs of Soviet "Polet" cigarettes brought by city residents to the barricades near the House of Soviets of the RSFSR on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment for the defenders of parliament and military personnel who refused to obey the members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP) during the 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 the Vice President of the USSR Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev, removed the President of the USSR from power and declared a state of emergency in the country. Valery Khristoforov/TASS