Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. Soviet T-72 Ural tanks at a barricade of trolleybuses erected by supporters of USSR President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and RSFSR President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin on Kutuzovsky Prospekt near the Kalinin Bridge during the attempted coup d'état by members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency. 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 USSR President from power and declared a state of emergency in the country. Andrei Solovyov/TASS