In the USSR itself, glasnost weakened the ideological bonds that held the Soviet Union together, and by February 1990, with the dissolution of the USSR looming, the Communist Party was forced to surrender its 73-year-old monopoly on state power. At the same time the union's component republics declared their autonomy from Moscow, with the Baltic states withdrawing from the union entirely. Gorbachev used force to keep the Baltics from breaking away. The USSR was fatally weakened by a failed coup in August 1991. A growing number of Soviet republics, particularly Russia, threatened to secede from the USSR. The Commonwealth of Independent States, created on 21 December 1991, was a successor entity to the Soviet Union. The USSR was declared officially dissolved on 26 December 1991.