As contemporary Jeane Kirkpatrick noted, "The world has watched with fascination the abandonment of the totalitarian project in Europe. It is not happening as Engels and Lenin predicted, but it is happening -- in full view and at an accelerating pace." (Kirkpatrick, 2) The first region to produce mass, organized dissent was the Baltic region, where, in 1987, the government of Estonia demanded autonomy. Not long after, Lithuania and Latvia, the other two Baltic republics made similar demands. .

             By the time Mikhail Gorbachev rose to power in 1985, the country had fallen into a state of severe stagnation and economic depression that desperately needed to be addressed. Gorbachev knew this and so introduced a two-tiered policy of reform. On one level, he initiated a policy of glasnost, or freedom of speech. On the other level, he began a program of economic reform known as perestroika, or rebuilding. But his policy of economic reform did not have the immediate results he had hoped for and had publicly predicted. The Soviet people consequently used their newly allotted freedom of speech to criticize Gorbachev for his failure to improve the economy. The nationalist movements in the Baltics put a heavy strain on Gorbachev's policy of glasnost. He did not want to beat them into submission but he knew that if something was not done, the peripheral states would all separate and the Soviet Union would fall. The situation reached a climax in 1991. (UMI.com, 1) To prevent further disintegration, Gorbachev drew up a union treaty to suppress the demands of the peripherals by allowing them to have more control of their affairs. This agreement was reached in July 1991 by Gorbachev and the leaders of 10 republics to give them a large amount of independence. The treaty was to be signed by five of the republics on August 20. But on August 19, barely before the treaty could be signed, conservative officials of the Communist Party, including the vice president, KGB chairman, premier, defense minister, and interior minister, staged a coup against Gorbachev's government by imprisoning Gorbachev and his family in their vacation home.