The
1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, also known as the
August Putsch or
August Coup , was a
coup d'état attempt by a group of members of the
Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president
Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup leaders were hard-line members of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) who were opposed to Gorbachev's reform program and the
new union treaty that he had negotiated which decentralised much of the central government's power to the republics. They were opposed, mainly in
Moscow, by a short but effective campaign of
civil resistance. Although the coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to government, the event destabilised the Soviet Union and is widely considered to have contributed to both the demise of the CPSU and the
dissolution of the Soviet Union.