The Congress of People’s Deputies convened in the Kremlin’s Palace of Congresses on March 15, 1990. The vote was not close: 1,329 for, 495 against. The new title, President of the Soviet Union, was meant to centralize authority, to provide a stable executive core for a fracturing empire. Gorbachev, already General Secretary of the Communist Party, accepted the role. He did not face a public vote. The ceremony was internal, bureaucratic, a rearrangement of deck chairs conducted with solemn state television coverage.
His powers, on paper, were vast. He could declare states of emergency, propose legislation, negotiate treaties. Yet the real authority had been bleeding out for years, seeping into the newly assertive republics. The presidency was a container for a substance that was no longer there. For nineteen months, he held the office, a man trying to govern a phantom. The attempted coup in August 1991 was not against the president, but against the ghost of the Union. When he resigned on December 25, 1991, he did so as President of a country that had already ceased to exist hours before. The office was abolished with him. It had no predecessor, no successor. A perfect administrative circle, drawn and then erased.