1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt attempt. Since assuming power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1985, Gorbachev had embarked on an ambitious program of reform, embodied in the twin concepts of "perestroika" and "glasnost", meaning economic/political restructuring and openness, respectively. These moves prompted resistance and suspicion on the part of hardline members of the "nomenklatura". The reforms also unleashed some forces and movements that Gorbachev did not expect. Specifically, nationalist agitation on the part of the Soviet Union's non-Russian minorities grew, and there were fears that some or all of the union republics might secede. In 1991, the Soviet
Union of Sovereign States confederation. The New Union Treaty () was a draft treaty that would have replaced the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the USSR and thus would have replaced the Soviet Union with a new entity named the Union of Sovereign States, an attempt of Mikhail Gorbachev to salvage and reform the Soviet Union. A ceremony of the Russian SFSR signing the treaty was scheduled for 20 August 1991, but was prevented by the August Coup a day earlier. The preparation of this treaty was known as the Novo-Ogarevo process (новоогаревский процесс), named after Novo-Ogaryovo, a governmental estate where the work