You're reading: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: What happened to the August 1991 Soviet coup plotters?

Eleven hard-liners in the Soviet government, military, Communist Party, and KGB were named in a Russian court as the organizers of the failed August 1991 coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.

They included the so-called “Gang of Eight” that had placed Gorbachev under house arrest – a short-lived, self-declared provisional government that called itself the State Committee for the Emergency Situation was known by its Russian acronym, GKChP. They also included three other senior Soviet political and military officials.

Read the story here.