Three Days in August: The Coup that Ended the USSR
In August of 1991 a group of eight men executed a coup of the Soviet government. The “Gang of Eight”, as they came to be called, detained Gorbachev at his summer villa, took control of radio and television stations, and declared a national state of emergency.
This book draws on previously-untranslated sources to tell the story of the coup in all its complexity and drama. Using archives, memoirs, government documents, contemporary newspaper accounts, and interviews with surviving participants, the book situates the coup in the context of late Soviet history and examines what its failure tells us about coups more broadly.
