 However, the coup was crushed and quickly defeated by loyalists, leading to a return of the "status quo".On 12 September 1974, Haile Selassie and his government were overthrown by the Derg, a non-ideological committee of low-ranking officers and enlisted men in the Ethiopian Army who became as the ruling military junta.On 21 March 1975, the Derg abolished the monarchy and adopted Marxist-Leninist communism as their official ideology, establishing themselves as a provisional government for the process of building a socialist state in Ethiopia.