MOSCOW, RUSSIA, AUGUST 1991
The failed coup which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union

These pictures were given to me in 1993 by a TV producer called Olga after a party at her flat in St Petersburg. When the coup happened I was working in the kitchen of a summer camp in Pennsylvania and I heard on the radio that Gorbachev had been "ousted". Luckily it was my last day at the camp and I watched events in Russia unfold on CNN at my aunt and uncle's house in New York State. A few weeks later I started studying Russian and History at the University of Birmingham

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