The August Coup

<p><b>'Lively and insightful' – <i>The Times</i><br>'Magnificent' – <i>The Guardian</i><br>'A masterly piece of scholarship, written like a political thriller' –<i> The Irish Times</i></b><br><b>‘Superb . . . A work of quite exceptional scholarship and narrative verve’ – <i>Literary Review</i><br>‘A must-read for those fascinated by the decline and fall of the USSR’ – Mark Galeotti<br>'Immensely well-researched and compellingly written . . . grips the reader from page one' – Andrew Roberts</b><br><br><b>From the acclaimed author of <i>Kremlin Winter</i> and <i>Blood on the Snow</i>, a dramatic and expertly researched account of an extraordinary moment in Russia’s recent history: the August Coup.</b><br><br>In the summer of 1991, a group of eight plotters came together to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachëv, then the president of the USSR. These ruthless conspirators, who occupied positions of high office, declared a state of emergency to restore stability through authoritarian rule. The reality turned out to be a shambolic failure which hastened the fall of the USSR and a pivotal shift from communism to capitalism.<br><br>Beginning with a minute-by-minute re-enactment of Gorbachëv’s capture in his holiday home in Crimea, Robert Service follows the plot from its inception to its humiliating collapse. The troubling side effects of Gorbachëv’s well-meant reforms in the Soviet Union – business fraud, government corruption, organized crime and interethnic conflict – increased exponentially, and a New Russia was born. Fathered by Boris Yeltsin, it brought lamentably less benefit to the Russian economy or its people than he had promised.<br><br>Linking the years from the coup itself to today’s Russia under Vladimir Putin, <i>The August Coup</i> is a thoroughly compelling and original chronicle of a moment that changed Russian and global politics forever.</p>