Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. A serviceman who took the side of USSR President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, near the House of Soviets of the RSFSR on Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment during an attempt by members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (GKChP) to carry out a 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 declared a state of emergency in the country. Andrei Solovyov/TASS