As outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump attempts to cling onto power despite decisively losing the election, fears of a coup in the United States are growing. Russia has experienced two coups in the recent past. The first, in 1991, was a last-ditch attempt to stop the reforms that eventually led to the collapse of the USSR. The second, in 1993, saw the democratically elected President Boris Yeltsin use military force to stop an effort to impeach him and instead impose a super-presidential constitution on Russia—the same constitution that Russia still governed by today. Why one failed and the other succeeded may provide lessons on how the United States will hold up in the next few weeks.
Western readers may not be familiar with the outline of both events. The coup of 1991 began on Aug. 19 when eight senior ministers calling themselves the State Committee on the State of Emergency seized power. The Committee, which came to be called the Gang of Eight, included some of the most powerful men in the country, including the vice president of the Soviet Union, the Minister of Defense, and the head of the KGB.
