By June 1991, after quashing a series of challenges to his leadership, he became the first elected president of Russia; two months later, real power fell into his hands, after the failed putsch against Gorbachev of August 1991 by conservatives seeking to prevent the Soviet Union’s disintegration. For most Westerners and many Russians, his finest hour came on August 19th that year, when he stood on a tank outside the Russian parliament and defied the hardliners who had seized power.