Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Leningrad. Participants in a rally on Palace Square in support of democracy during an attempt by members of the State Committee on the State of Emergency 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 USSR President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev from power and created the State Emergency Committee. Yuri Belinsky, Nikolai Berketov/TASS