Few people in modern political history have been honored with such lifetime glory and at the same time have been subjected to such sharp attacks and ridicule as a man with a simple Russian surname Gorbachev - "Gorby", as he was somewhat familiarly, but with obvious sympathy, nicknamed on West.
This man has enough titles and awards, his biographies in different languages occupy a whole shelf, and over time, no doubt, more than one feature film will be made about him - the zigzags of his political career are too contradictory. Not a single decision he made during his years in power was unequivocal, whether it was an anti-alcohol legislative decision or the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan. He held a wide variety of positions, but if you choose the most "exclusive" of them, then it sounds like this: First President of the USSR. The uniqueness of this position is that it existed for a very short time, less than two years, and then disappeared into 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 thatextraordinary!) Congress of People's Deputies, which at that time served as the highest body of state power. In the USSR, there has never been a political post called "president of the country". In this regard, it is curious 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 congratulations be addressed 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, but 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 Central Committee of the CPSU, 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 Sergeyevich Gorbachev, held this position until his election to the post, which now allowed him to consider even the most implacable anti-communist, for example, President of the United States of America Ronald Reagan, as his colleague.
It is M. Gorbachev and R. Reagan who are considered the creators of the new world order, which forever ended the era of the Cold War. The surname of the last President of the USSR did not leave the pages of the mostrespectable newspapers and magazines, praising him as a politician who managed to make our planet a safer place to live. The Nobel Peace Prize is the strongest evidence of the recognition of M. Gorbachev's merits in this field.
However, the first, he is also the last President of the USSR in his country more often received completely different epithets - such as a destroyer, traitor, defiler and others. Some of these accusations may be true, but for the most part they are not. In any case, History will have the last word, but for now, the name of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev alone still acts on some not very smart people as the strongest irritant.
But he has long been accustomed to this and does not pay attention to the streams of accusations and direct slander - that's why he and Mikhail Gorbachev, the only one of his kind, the first President of the USSR!
