| Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) from 1985 to 1991 and president of the Soviet Union in 1990–91, was removed from office on this day by a so-called Emergency Committee of Soviet hard-liners. With Gorbachev and his family under house arrest in the Crimea, the task of resistance fell to Boris Yeltsin, who had become a political voice for economic reform. Yeltsin branded the coup leaders as traitors, barricaded himself inside the Russian ... |