August Coup the Truth and the Lessons Author:Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Gorbachev's The August Coup is an analysis of the causes and consequences of the coup d'etat that began on 18 August. Why and how did the conspiracy become possible? What was behind this attempt to destroy everything that had been done over six years in an effort to change the nature of Soviet society-to make it democratic, civilized and... more » free, and to rid the world of the threat of nuclear war? This book tells how profound social transformations in the Soviet Union inevitably were accompanied by popular discontent over the hardships of daily life, of which the coup plotters sought to take advantage. Gorbachev speaks frankly of his own mistakes and oversights, and of the differences and conflicts in the democratic movement which the conspirators also sought to exploit. A chapter deals with the three days in the Crimea during which the President and his family were totally isolated. Gorbachev writes of the people who showed courage and fortitude in defending democracy-a new breed of people who have learned to appreciate the new values brought to life by perestroika, who put the defence of those values above everything else. And he gives a complete account of his actions, and his reasons for those actions, during the Supreme Soviet Session in late August and at the Congress of people's Deputies in early September. The August Coup is the story the world has been waiting to hear, an unprecedented achievement from the man who is the chief architect of change in the Soviet Union, a man whose reforms and whose life (and the lives of his family) hung in the balance for three days that threatened to shatter the emerging New World Order and bring a return to the Cold War.« less