Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Nizhny Novgorod. Participants in a rally on Minin and Pozharsky Square in support of democratic forces after the failure of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (GKChP) to carry out a coup in the country. 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. Nikolai Moshkov/TASS