The end of the Soviet Union, and the political career of Mikhail Gorbachev, came remarkably fast.

On Aug. 18, 1991, Gorbachev, the Soviet president, was placed under house arrest during an attempted coup by hard-line Communists that collapsed as abruptly as it began, with the president returning to Moscow to reassert control. Then, four months later, Gorbachev told a weary, anxious nation that he was resigning as president, and the Soviet Union collapsed.

After 70 years of Communist tyranny, the end was an extraordinary and speedy turn of events, reflecting Gorbachev’s fragile hold on power during the transformation he had unleashed, and which had spun out of control.

Gorbachev described the leaders of the attempted coup as “a miserable group” that had tried to “break” him and “to influence his family” by surrounding them with troops and isolating them for 72 hours. The Soviet president congratulated the people for having had the “responsibility and dignity” to resist the takeover.

He particularly thanked the leader of the Russian Federated Republic, Boris Yeltsin, for standing up to the coup leaders.

The coup crumbled as abruptly as it began, without any formal announcement from its leaders, who sent tanks into Moscow and declared themselves in command.

After the coup failed, relief spread among the thousands of Muscovites who had spent two drizzly nights at makeshift barricades around a wedding-cake-like building on the banks of the Moscow River called the White House, from which Yeltsin marshaled the anti-coup forces.

But even as Moscow waited for Gorbachev to reappear, it was evident that the balance of power and the course of the Soviet Union’s history had shifted. The Communists who had fought a rear-guard action against change had suffered a potentially fatal blow, but Gorbachev himself was now beholden to the anti-Communist forces that had rescued him and, above all, to a rival, Yeltsin.

Yeltsin, who would become the first leader of post-Soviet Russia, was the indisputable man of the hour, and the advocates of economic and political reform were clearly ascendant.

For Gorbachev, the attempted coup also held out hope of a political lift at a time his fortunes were rapidly ebbing. But it did not last long. On Dec. 26, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president.

“I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” the then-60-year-old politician declared.

Gorbachev made no attempt in his brief television address to mask his bitter regret at being forced from office by the creation of the new Commonwealth of Independent States, composed of 11 former republics of the collapsed Soviet empire under the informal leadership of Yeltsin.

Within hours of Gorbachev’s resignation, Western and other nations began recognizing Russia and the other former republics.

“We’re now living in a new world,” Gorbachev declared in recognizing the rich history of his tenure. “An end has been put to the Cold War and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes and morals. The threat of nuclear war has been removed.”

The New York Times News Service