Article: SIDE LIGHTS.(the day the Soviet Union dissolved)(Brief Article)

* August 1991, only two months after Boris Yeltsin was elected president of Russia, was a turbulent time. In one short week in August, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union--the party that had once ruled Russia and much of eastern Europe--destroyed itself. The destruction began on Aug. 19, 1991, when an eight-man "emergency committee" replaced Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in a coup d'etat (KOO day-TAH), an illegal seizure of power. The committee was made up of hard line Communists who feared that Gorbachev's reforms were destroying communism.

* The coup leaders seemed to believe that the Soviet people, used to so many years of dictatorship, would simply ...

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