lost its authority to lead the nation or the cohesion that kept the party united. The growing likelihood of the dissolution of the USSR itself led hardline elements in the CPSU to launch the August Coup in 1991 which temporarily removed Gorbachev from power. On August 19, 1991, a day before the New Union Treaty was to be signed devolving power to the republics, a group calling itself the "State Emergency Committee" seized power in Moscow declaring that Gorbachev was ill and therefore relieved of his position as president. Vice President Gennady Yanayev was named acting president. The committee's eight members included Yanayev, KGB chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov, Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo, Defense Minister Dmitriy Yazov and Prime Minister Valentin Pavlov. The coup failed because of large public demonstrations and the efforts of Boris Yeltsin, who became the real power in Russia as a result. Gorbachev returned to Moscow as president and vowed to purge the party of hardliners. The KGB was disbanded as were other CPSU-related agencies and organisations. The coup destroyed the CPSU politically. By nearly all accounts, the coup proved that the party was beyond reform. For all intents and purposes, Communist rule in the Soviet Union ended on August 24. That day, Gorbachev dissolved the Central Committee, resigned as general secretary and ordered all party units in the government dissolved. Vladimir Ivashko was chosen as acting general secretary later that day. However, actual political power lay in the positions of President of the Soviet Union (held by Gorbachev) and President of the Russian SFSR (held by Yeltsin). Ivashko remained for five days as acting General Secretary until August 29, when the Supreme Soviet suspended all party activities on Soviet territory. On November 6, Yeltsin issued a decree banning all CPSU activities on Russian territory and confiscating all party property in Russia. On November 30, 1992; the Russian Constitutional Court not only upheld this decree, but barred the CPSU from ever being refounded. It accepted Yeltsin's argument that the CPSU was not a true party, but a criminal organisation that had ruled the Soviet Union as a dictatorship in violation of the Soviet Constitution. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian adherents to the CPSU tradition, particularly as it existed before Gorbachev, reorganised themselves as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Today there is a widespread flora of parties in Russia claiming to be the