Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. Metro passengers reading a special edition of the Moskovskie Novosti newspaper at the Pushkinskaya station of the Tagansko-Krasnopresnenskaya Line of the Moscow Metro about the situation in the country during the attempt by members of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR (GKChP) to carry out a coup d'état. 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. Gennady Khamelyanin/TASS