19 August
1991 · politics
Hardliners tried to seize power in Moscow
Tanks appeared on the streets of Moscow, Mikhail Gorbachev was detained at his holiday dacha, and a self-appointed committee announced it was running the Soviet Union. It collapsed in three days, largely because the army would not fire on the crowds and Boris Yeltsin stood on a tank outside the Russian parliament and told them not to.
By Christmas the Soviet Union itself no longer existed. For anyone who had grown up with the Cold War as a permanent condition, that took a very long time to sink in.
“Did you ever expect the Cold War to end in your lifetime?”