in the campaign “Attempted Coup d'État by the GKChP (August 1991)”
An armed seizure of power: the GKChP statement of 18 August 1991 announced the transfer of the USSR president's powers: "In connection with the impossibility, for reasons of health, of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev performing the duties of President of the USSR and the transfer… of the powers of the President of the USSR to Vice-President Gennady Ivanovich Yanayev… to form the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR"[1]. The putsch was timed to derail the treaty-based reconstitution of the Union: "The formation of the GKChP was preceded by the so-called Novo-Ogaryovo process - negotiations begun on April 23, 1991 by USSR President Gorbachev at his suburban residence of Novo-Ogaryovo with the leaders of the union republics on the signing of a new Union Treaty"[2] - the coup cut this process short.