In the early hours of August 19, 1991, senior Soviet officials who disagreed with Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms and the new version of the Union Treaty, set up the State Committee for State of Emergency. Almost all television channels went off the air. Troops were deployed to major cities. Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, at that time on vacation in Crimea, was confined to the government residence in Foros. Photo: tanks on Kalininsky Prospekt (now Novy Arbat), one of Moscow’s central streets.