Song For Denise ( Moscow in 1991)

The August Coup of 1991 was a failed attempt made by Communist leaders of the Soviet Union to take control of the country from Mikhail Gorbachev, who was Soviet President and General Secretary. The coup leaders were hard-line opponents of Gorbachev's reform program and of the new union treatythat he had negotiated. The treaty decentralized much of the central government's power to the republics. The hard liners were opposed, mainly in Moscow by a short but effective campaign of civil resistance  led by Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who had been both an ally and critic of Gorbachev. Although the coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to power, the event destabilized the USSR and is widely considered to have contributed to both the demise of the CPSU