{"product_id":"the-august-coup-robert-service-9781529065787","title":"The August Coup","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom acclaimed historian and author of Kremlin Winter and Blood on the Snow, a dramatic and expertly researched account of an extraordinary moment in Russia's recent history: the August Coup.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn the summer of 1991, a group of eight plotters came together to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev, then the president of the USSR. These ruthless conspirators, who occupied positions of high office, declared a state of emergency to restore stability through authoritarian rule. The reality turned out to be a shambolic failure which hastened the fall of the USSR and a pivotal shift from communism to capitalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBeginning with a minute-by-minute re-enactment of Gorbachev's capture in his holiday home in Crimea, Robert Service follows the plot from its inception to its humiliating collapse. The troubling side effects of Gorbachev's well-meant reforms in the Soviet Union - business fraud, government corruption, organized crime and interethnic conflict - increased exponentially, and a New Russia was born. Fathered by Boris Yeltsin, it brought lamentably less benefit to the Russian economy or its people than he had promised.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLinking the years from the coup itself to today's Russia under Vladimir Putin, The August Coup is a thoroughly compelling and original chronicle of a moment that changed Russian and global politics for ever.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Robert Service","offers":[{"title":"New","offer_id":51372881412339,"sku":"9781529065787","price":65.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0634\/4284\/5939\/files\/9781529065787.jpg?v=1789589691","url":"https:\/\/www.harryhartog.com.au\/products\/the-august-coup-robert-service-9781529065787","provider":"Harry Hartog Bookseller","version":"1.0","type":"link"}