On August 19, it is 17 years of the start of the coup in Moscow that directly contributed to the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The attempted coup of 1991 is also known as the August Putsch, the Vodka Putsch, "Political Chernobyl” or the August Coup d’Etat and was an attempt by a group of conservative dignitaries to take over control of the country. On August 19, 1991, while the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachov was in Crimea on a holiday, TASS agency announced that he "was incapable of continuing his duties for health reasons" and was replaced by the deputy president Ghennady Ianaev. The putsch participants declared a state of emergency for sixth months, announcing the reintroduction of censorship and ordering the tanks to enter Moscow. Moldova’s first President Mircea Snegur has told Info-Prim Neo that Moldova was the only republic that trenchantly said it is against the coup. The unit that managed the country in those days decided to disobey the orders coming from Moscow, realizing that the coup d’etat was an attempt to establish dictatorship. “We followed every movement of the military troops that swarmed in Moldova, we called on the people to come to Chisinau and guard the strategic buildings,” Snegur said. The people in Moscow and other capital cities of the former USSR took to the streets. One of the persons that protected Chisinau against the invasion of the Soviet troops, Valentin Ciobanu, stated to the Agency that together with thousands of old men, he went out in the street at the appeal of Mircea Snegur. Together with his colleagues from the Tobacco Complex, he spent three nights at strategic buildings – one night at the Central Telegraph, one night at the Television and during one night they blocked the Warriors Regiment 300 led by Alexandr Lebed’s brother, which was deployed in Buiucani district. “I told my colleagues that the soldiers shoot when they see soldiers in front of them and will not fire at ordinary people. I learned such a lesson in Czechoslovakia in 1968,” said Valentin Ciobanu, adding that during all the nights they listened to Radio Moldova. On Thursday, August 22, the putsch participants were arrested. The former president of the State Security Committee of Moldova, Tudor Botnaru, said that the Soviet Union would not have been dismembered, if the coup of August 19, 1991 had not taken place. The 15 republics would have followed the perestroika plan and would have implemented democratic reforms in a Chinese way with Soviet gloss. Tudor Botnaru has told Info-Prim Neo that the putsch that was meant to save the Soviet Union contributed directly to the collapse of the empire. After three days of uncertainty, the republics started to withdraw from the Union and declare their independence. Moldova did so on August 27, Tudor Botnaru said. He refuted some experts’ statements that convoys of tanks headed for Moldova during the putsch days in order to establish order in the republic that did not want to comply with plotters’ demands. Seventeen years later, many of the details of the putsch remain unclear. Among these is the role played by Mikhail Gorbachov, who allegedly did not rule out the possibility of a state of emergency before the dismemberment of the USSR. “The putsch of August 19, 1991 was mounted by Mikhail Gorbachov, who lacked authority and could not rule the country after perestroika and glasnosti,” the former First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moldova, Grigore Eremei, has told Info-Prim Neo. He said that Gorbachov hoped to return to Moscow as national hero after the coup, but the happenings made him return with a discredited power. “The regime had a logical and legitimate ending - the power obtained by a coup in October 1917 was lost also by a coup,” the cited source said. The coup d’etat or the putsch happened one day before the republics were set to sign a new union treaty that would have made them independent countries in a federation with a common president, foreign policy and army. Though the coup failed three days later and Gorbachov returned to power, the event destroyed any possibility of keeping the Union in a less centralized form.