Abstract
On 19 August 1991, the Soviet population and the world were shocked to learn that President Gorbachev had been deposed by a self-formed ‘state committee on the state of emergency’ which claimed extraordinary powers and declared a state of emergency throughout the USSR. Since the heads of the armed forces, KGB and Interior Ministry were all members of the committee, many observers expected the plotters to demonstrate the resolve to succeed. As we have seen, however (pp. 3–7), the coup collapsed on the third day in the face of an outpouring of popular outrage, defections among military and KGB units charged with suppressing resistance and near-unanimous condemnation of the coup by world public opinion.
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© 1992 Thomas F. Remington
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Remington, T.F. (1992). Towards a Participatory Politics?. In: White, S., Pravda, A., Gitelman, Z. (eds) Developments in Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22191-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22191-2_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-57707-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-22191-2
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