Perestroika crisis
Reform without a new union consent.
The union treaty calendar is the fuse. Without 20 August on the diary, 19 August is unintelligible.
Baltic independence and the 1991 January violence are the year's preface.
Timeline
- Yeltsin elected RSFSR president
A rival legitimacy in Moscow.
- Union treaty scheduled
The fuse the GKChP named.
- Committee announces
Tanks; Gorbachev "ill."
- Yeltsin on the tank
The photograph of the three days.
- Standoff
Crowds; units hesitate.
- Three dead; collapse
Tunnel incident; committee flees the stage.
- Gorbachev returns
To a different country.
- Gorbachev quits party post
The CPSU unravels.
- Belovezha
Russia, Ukraine, Belarus declare the USSR finished.
- USSR flag down
The legal end in Moscow.
Eras
The putsch
GKChP, tanks, White House.
Acceleration
Party banned; republics leave.
Legal end
Belovezha to the lowered flag.
Memory
Yeltsin myth, later Russian revisits.
Milestones
A junta that lasted 72 hours
Duration as the fact.
Union legitimacy wrecked
The centre could not claim emergency successfully.
December follows August
Acceleration, not a solo cause.
Gorbachev's return was not a restoration. December was the sentence August started.
Yeltsin's August credit is real and incomplete as a life verdict.