ABSTRACT
In the event, conservatives sought to halt the dissolution of communist power and the disintegration of the country through a coup detat, but succeeded only in destroying the country that they tried to save. The attempted coup was therefore a conservative one, trying to preserve the USSR and its political system but ready to accept some necessary changes. Some of the old guard in state posts also committed suicide, notably Marshal Sergei Akhromeev on 24 August, in despair at seeing the destruction of his life's work in building the USSR. But the whole of Russia stood up in its defence.' The coup was followed by what can be considered the fourth and final phase of perestroika: disintegration. Statehood was being returned to Russia in two senses: as a political state at last freeing itself from the tutelage of the Communist Party; and as a republic with the attributes of sovereign statehood separate from the USSR.
