First President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev said how From his point of view, the Soviet Union could be preserved after the coup in August 1991. The path according to politics was the creation of a Union of Sovereign States.
Gorbachev pointed out that the authorities first underestimated the scale of the problems in relations between the center and the republics, as well as in interethnic relations. In this regard, it was not immediately decided that the Soviet Union “should be restored.” Even after the coup, Gorbachev proposed the creation of a Union of Sovereign States, which would become a “Confederate state with even broader powers of the republics.”