On August 19th of 1991 a cabal of hard-line Communists tried to depose Mikhail Gorbachev and take control of the Soviet Union. The State Emergency Committee (SEC) as the cabal called itself laste only three days, August 19th, 20th and 21st. It included . . some the highest officials of the Soviet Union. These included the vice president, the prime minister, the minister of defense, the chairman of the KGB, and the commander of the land forces. There were genera protests in the streets. The members of the SEC wanted the protests put down, with violence if necessary, they did not want to issue the orders that authorized violence. The members of the SEC wanted the army, the interior ministry and KGB to carryout the violent suppression without signed order to do so. The officbleers of the army knew full well that they would be held responsible for the deaths that would ensue in the suppression of the potests and demonstrations. Consequently the officers did not send the troops in.

This indecision is chronicled in the events at the house for the president of Russia, popularly known as the White House. Boris Yeltsin, asY occupied the White House. The SEC planned for a joint operation of the Soviet army, the KGB and the troops of the Interior Ministry to capture the White House and put Yeltsin and the other top officials under arrest. The operation was scheduled for 1 AM on August 20th. Before 1 AM the operation was postponed to 3 AM. It did not take place at all. This was because the army was waiting the KGB to iniate the operation and the KGB was waiting for the army. The troops of the Interior Ministry were waiting for the army and the KGB to start the operation.

As Yegor Gaidar so eloquently expressed it

After the events of August 19-21, 1991, the death of the [Soviet] empire was no longer inevitable--it had taken place.

Even had the coup succeeded in August of 1991 it would shortly have failed because the Soviet Union needed vast amounts of money to buy grain for the population. The only possible source of those funds was Western banks. Those banks would not lend to the Russia under the control of the coup leaders.

Source:
Yegor Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia, Brookings Institution Press, Washington,, D.C. 2007.