The Fall of the Soviet Union · 10 Jul 2026 · 12 min

Yeltsin on the Tank: What the August Coup Actually Decided

The August 1991 coup brought tanks to Moscow and classical music to Soviet radio — but it was Yeltsin climbing onto an armoured vehicle that settled the fate of the USSR. This episode unpacks what the plotters got catastrophically wrong, and why three days in August made the Soviet collapse inevitable.

The Fall of the Soviet Union
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Yeltsin on the Tank: What the August Coup Actually Decided

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On the morning of August nineteenth, nineteen ninety-one, Soviet citizens turned on their radios and heard classical music. Not news.

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