On August 21st 1991 The August Coup in the Soviet Union collapsed.

The coup had been started on August 19th by the "Gang of Eight" with the aim of replacing Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as they disagreed with his reform programmes. The Gang detained a number of people to prevent them from interfering, but notably not Russian President Boris Yeltsin, using military forces to seize control of a number of significant buildings. Gorbachev was in a dacha near the Black Sea when the coup occurred.

The failure to detain Yeltsin was a significant point, as a result of which Yeltsin and other military forces defended the Russian White House from coup-forces. Consequently, the coup collapsed shortly after it began, on August 21st.

Image: Kremlin.ru [CC BY 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons