Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. A rally in support of democracy near the Moscow City Council building on Sovetskaya Square during an attempted coup by members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (GKChP). 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, Gennady Khamelyanin/TASS