Attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in 1991

USSR. Moscow. Clashes between protesting supporters of USSR President Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and RSFSR President Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin and servicemen of the Taman Division near the Tchaikovsky Tunnel on the Garden Ring on the night of August 20-21, 1991, after a state of emergency was declared in the country during an attempted coup d'état. 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 president of the USSR from power and created the State Committee for the State of Emergency (GKChP). Sergei Mamontov/TASS