The August Coup

'Lively and insightful' - The Times
'Magnificent' - The Guardian
'A masterly piece of scholarship, written like a political thriller' - The Irish Times
'Superb' - Literary Review
'A must-read' - Mark Galeotti
'Grips the reader from page one' - Andrew Roberts

In August 1991, eight ruthless conspirators attempted to seize control of the USSR. Instead, they destroyed it.

From our finest historian of Soviet Russia, Professor Robert Service, comes a dramatic, minute-by-minute account of the August Coup, the extraordinary flashpoint that ushered in the end of the USSR and changed global politics forever.

When the architects of the coup abducted Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachëv from his Crimean holiday home, they intended to restore strict authoritarian rule. Instead, their desperate plot devolved into a shambolic failure, accelerating the collapse of the Soviet Union and triggering a chaotic shift to capitalism.

Masterfully linking this three-day crisis to present-day Russia, Service exposes how the fallout of the coup, and the corruption that followed under Boris Yeltsin, ultimately paved the way for the rise of Vladimir Putin. The result is this gripping, deeply researched chronicle of one of Russia's most pivotal turning points.