ON THIS DAY ·
August Coup
19–21 Aug 1991 — Hardliners seize Gorbachev and send tanks into Moscow; Yeltsin climbs one outside the parliament. The army refuses to fire, the coup dissolves in 60 hours — and takes the union with it.
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The moment in context
Germany reunified in October 1990 with Soviet consent, as Gorbachev, by now dependent on Western credits and drawn to the idea of a “common European home,” accepted the very outcome every predecessor had armed to prevent. Inside the USSR his balancing act was failing in both directions at once, because reformers around Boris Yeltsin, newly elected as president of Russia, pressed for faster sovereignty while hardliners demanded restoration of the old order. In August 1991 the hardliners struck, detaining Gorbachev and sending armour into Moscow, and their attempt collapsed within about sixty hours once crowds resisted and the troops refused to fire.
From End of the Cold War, chapter 12 of The Cold War, 1945–1991 (DEC 1991).
The place: August Coup — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — The August coup: the ratchet that broke. The plotters. KGB chief, defense minister, prime minister: the state’s own core. Had every instrument of Soviet power except one: a society still…
- The turn — Belovezha, 8 December 1991. Three men in a forest lodge dissolve a nuclear superpower with a preamble: the USSR “as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality is…
- What it changed — Who ended it? The four-way argument. Pressure (Reagan school): the buildup and SDI made the arms race unaffordable and emboldened reformers. Choice (Gorbachev school): nothing required…
Then ask the room: “The Cold War ended without a war.” Defend and attack that sentence using three markers and two snapshots from this atlas. The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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