Michaił Gorbaczow – prezydent upadającego państwa
Mikhail Gorbachev – the President of a Falling State

Summary/Abstract: The final years of the Soviet Union were dominated by a desperate attempt to resolve the economic and social impasse. It was also a period of searching for new ways of legislation, which would enable the efficient and least burdensome for the power transition from the post – totalitarian system to the strictly limited system of quasi-democracy. Replacement of the totalitarian state solution by imitate democratic institutions was a way of maintaining power by the elite. Implemented change did not protect from the final collapse of the Soviet Union, but even accelerated it. The election of Gorbachev as the first executive President of the Soviet Union – which was made as a result of changes in the Soviet constitution – was an attempt to consolidate (and to legitimate) of power. Nevertheless this fact did not strengthen his position, quite the contrary, undermined it. Analogous changes took place in the constitutions of the others republics and were push up by local leaders because elections for the President of the Republic gave them a real and independent of the political center power.

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