Mikhail Gorbachev major campaign to limit alcohol consumption, which Gorbachev—who believed it would improve health and work efficiency—oversaw. His wife keenly supported the measure. As a result, crime rates fell and life expectancy grew slightly between 1986 and 1987. The reform had significant costs to the Soviet economy, resulting in losses of up to $100 billion between 1985 and 1990. Gorbachev later considered the campaign to have been an error. In April 1986 the Chernobyl disaster occurred; in the immediate aftermath, officials fed Gorbachev incorrect information to downplay the incident. As the scale of the disaster became apparent, 336,000 people were evacuated
Mikhail Gorbachev also saw this publication as the start of a campaign to oust Gorbachev. Meanwhile, on 12 June 1991 Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the Russian Federation by 57.3% of the vote (with a turnout of 74%). In contrast to the reformers' moderate approach to the new treaty, the hard-line apparatchiks, still strong within the CPSU and military establishment, completely opposed anything which might lead to the break-up of the Soviet Union. On the eve of the treaty's signing, hardline Soviet leaders, calling themselves the 'State Committee on the State of Emergency', launched the August coup in an attempt to