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Hard times: Eighteen-year-old prostitute Katya scours the street for work as a police car drives past in Moscow in 1991 shortly before the collapse of the USSR

Bleak: Siberians line up outside a shop in Novokuznetsk, Russia, in a sign of the economic decline that had beset the country in the final years of communist rule

Hindered by centralised market forces: A long queue forms in Novokuznetsk for bacon and other meat from the butcher at a state-run market

Glum: Two dirty children look out the window in a coal-mining and steel-manufacturing community in Siberia enduring widespread economic hardships

Struggling: Siberian women sit outside houses in the coal-mining and steel-manufacturing community of Novokuznetsk

Bleak: Russians must wait in food lines to get whatever goods are available in November 1991, just a month before the collapse of the USSR

A real age of austerity: Shoppers line up at the check out stand of a store in Moscow in 1991 as the USSR neared collapse

Looks more like the 1970s: Women patients sit at a table with food and fold their laundry in a rundown hospital ward in Moscow in July 1991

Taking a breather: Hospital nurse Ludmilla Subocheva smokes on her break in the dining room

Unrest: Soldiers and tanks moved to Red Square to surround the Kremlin at the beginning of the coup. But by the end, much of the military decided to back Gorbachev

Grim: A line forms for bread in Moscow (left), while woman mourns the three victims of the attempted coup at various impromptu memorials around the city in 1991

Sombre: Three female Moscow department store workers watch a mass funeral from the store window following the failed coup attempt

Small comfort: Women stand next to several vodka bottles which they are exchanging for small change at a recycling point

Taking their minds off things: Siberian men relax outside a shack in the town of Novokuznetsk, which was hit hard by widespread economic problems in the early 90s

No smiles: Female miners take a break from their work in the town of Novokuznetsk, Russia, in June 1991

Getting the bare essentials: Shoppers and vendors in a food market in Kaluga in November 1991

Signs of desperation: People stand in line with cans for food supplies in Tula, Russia, in November 1991

Hoping for anything: Russians must wait in food lines to get whatever goods are available in Moscow

Putting on a brave face: A woman stands near the back of a queue for a market in the Russian capital

Dark times: A coal miner who lives in an industrial community in Siberia enduring widespread economic hardships in June 1991

Getting by: A woman plays her accordion along Arbat Street in Moscow, a popular pedestrian thoroughfare, as several men stand nearby watching her

A young girl plays her violin for a crowd with her dog lounging in the violin case (left) and an accordionist (right) performs on Arbat Street in Moscow