Boris Yeltsin, in suit and tie, surrounded by worried colleagues, stands atop a tank in Moscow in  mid-August, 1991, twenty-two years ago this month, and reads a statement.

The recent end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West at the time remained tenuous. Mikhail Gorbachev had become Soviet leader in 1985 and the great draw down of nuclear weapons between the United States and the Soviets began in the years following. Eastern European countries began their movement away from the Soviet orbit in 1989 and 1990. East and West Germany, split since the end of World War II, had united less than a year before.

Now, Russian hard liners wanted to roll back history and reestablish the Soviet Union. They took advantage of Gorbachev’s absence from the capital at that time to attempt a takeover.

Yeltsin led opponents of the coup,  jumping on a tank outside the chief Russian government building. He read from a statement calling on citizens to resist this step backward.

They did, and the coup failed. Gorbachev returned to Moscow. The Soviet Union was dissolved a few months later.

In hindsight, we mourn the turn Russia has taken since then: the chaos that overtook that first stirring of democracy; the return to authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin.

Yet, many dissent from Putin’s rule. They can take comfort in the remembrance of Yeltsin, a man with very human failings, daring to overcome his fear and call on his fellow citizens to resist the return to a dead past.