The first President of the USSR: a creator or ...?

Few people in modern political history were awarded such fatal glory and at the same time was subjected to such harsh attacks and ridicule as a man with a simple Russian name Gorbachev - "Gorby", as he was somewhat familiar, but with obvious sympathy was nicknamed in the West. This person has enough titles and awards, his biographies in different languages occupy a whole shelf, and over time, no doubt, about him will remove more than one feature film - the zigzags of his political career are too contradictory. No decision he made during the years in power was unambiguous, whether it was an anti-alcoholic legislative decision or the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. He held a variety of positions, but if you choose the most "exclusive" from them, it sounds like this: First President of the USSR. The uniqueness of this post is that it lasted very briefly, less than two years, and then went down in history along with the state itself, the Soviet Union.

The first President of the USSR was elected in March 1990 at the third (I note, extraordinary!) Congress of People's Deputies, which at that time served as the supreme body of state power. In the USSR, there has never before been a political post called "the president of the country." In this connection it is interesting to recall that the hierarchy of the Soviet state was strikingly different from the generally accepted system in the world, this created a lot of delicate problems in diplomatic communication. To whom, for example, should I send congratulations on the occasion of the main national holiday? All over the world the president of a state writes to the president of another country, the prime minister to his colleague, and what about in the case of the Soviet Union? It is clear that the most influential person in the USSR is not the chairman of the Council of Ministers, but the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, but this is a party, not a state post ...

With some stretch, the president of the country could be called the Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, that is, the head of the supreme legislative body of the Soviet state. The first President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, held this position right up to his election to the post, which now allowed him to consider even the most irreconcilable anti-communist, for example, the president of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan, his colleague. It is M. Gorbachev and R. Reagan who are considered to be the creators of the new world order, which ended forever with the era of the "cold war". Last name of the last President of the USSR did not descend from the most respectable newspapers and magazines, glorifying him as a politician, who managed to make our planet safer to live. The Nobel Peace Prize is the most weighty proof of Mikhail Gorbachev's recognition of his achievements in this field.

However, the first, he, the last President of the USSR in his country, was more often awarded with quite different epithets - such as the destroyer, the traitor, the defiler and others. Something in these accusations may be true, but for the most part - still not. The last word in any case will remain with History, but so far only the name of Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev still acts on some not very intelligent people as the strongest irritant. But he has long been accustomed to this and does not pay attention to the flow of accusations and direct slander - for that he and Mikhail Gorbachev, the only one of its kind, the first President of the USSR!