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Soviet Union

Gorbachev, Mikhail, The August Coup: The Truth and the Lessons, London and New York, Harper Collins, 1991, pp. 127

Gorbachev’s own brief account of the attempted coup against him and his reformist programme in August 1991, with some appended documents.

Gorbanevskaya, Natalia, Red Square at Noon, London, Andre Deutsch, 1972, pp. 285

On the demonstration in Red Square, Moscow, against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, and subsequent trial and sentences.

Holland, Barbara, Soviet Sisterhood: British Feminists on Women in the USSR, Bloomington IN, Indiana University Press and Fourth Estate, 1986, pp. 272

Includes chapter by Alix Holt, ‘The First Soviet Feminists’ on Leningrad group associated with The Almanach: ‘Women and Russia’ and their club ‘Maria’.

Hosking, Geoffrey, The Awakening of the Soviet Union, [1990], Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 256

Mamonova, Tatyana, Women and Russia: Feminist Writings from the Soviet Union, Boston MA, Beacon Press, 1984, pp. 272

Mamonova and three others in the group were forced into exile by the KGB.

Posadskaya, Anastasia, Women in Russia: A New Era of Russian Feminism, London, Verso, 1994, pp. 256

Study spanning women’s position in Tsarist Russia, th e Communist period and immediate aftermath of dissolution of USSR.

Remnick, David, Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1994, pp. 586

Part 4, pp. 433-90, covers the August Coup, emphasizing popular support for the resistance as well as the mistakes of the plotters. For a contrasting interpretation see:

Roberts, Adam, Civil Resistance in the East European and Soviet Revolutions, Cambridge MA, Albert Einstein Institution, 1991, pp. 43

Sharp, Gene ; Jenkins, Bruce, The Anti-Coup, Cambridge MA, Albert Einstein Institution, 2003, pp. 64

Summary analysis of potential for popular nonviolent resistance to defeat coup attempts, recommendations for organised strategy and advance preparations to prevents coups, and with very brief description of resistance to Kapp Putsch in 1920, the Algerian Generals in 1961 and to attempt to overthrow Gorbachev in 1991.

Stead, Jean ; Grunberg, Gabrielle, END Special Report: Moscow Independent Peace Group, London, Merlin Press, 1982, pp. 44

Steele, Jonathan, Eternal Russia: Yeltsin, Gorbachev and the Mirage of Democracy, London, Faber and Faber, 1994

Chapter 4, pp. 59-70, gives an eye witness account of the coup and stresses the inefficiency of the plotters and the limited popular response to Yeltsin’s call for popular defiance and a general strike.