The 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, also known as the August Putsch or August Coup ( Avgustovsky Putch), was a coup d'état attempt by a group of members of the Soviet Union's government to take control of the country from Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev. The coup leaders were hard-line members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) who were opposed to Gorbachev's reform program and the new union treaty that he had negotiated which decentralised much of the central government's power to the republics. They were opposed, mainly in Moscow, by a short but effective campaign of civil resistance. Although the coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to office, the event is widely reckoned as the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. Before August was out, the CPS