Hard-line Communist Party leaders briefly seize power and place Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest while he is vacationing in the Crimea. The KGB-led coup is quickly thwarted, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin denouncing it from atop a tank in Moscow as hundreds of thousands of pro-democratic Soviets demonstrate. Within days, Gorbachev is released unharmed, returns to Moscow and declares himself back in charge. By December, the Soviet Union dissolves and becomes the Commonwealth of Independent States, with Yeltsin at the helm.
