Soviet Union
By the 1980s the Soviet economy was suffering but it was stable. Gorbachev's new ideas had gotten out of hand and the communist party lost control. Boris Yeltsin was elected (democratically) the President of the Russian SFSR even though Gorbachev did not want him to come into power. Lithuania announced its independence from the Union and the Soviet government demanded it surrender its independence or it would send the Red Army to keep order. Gorbachev invented the idea of keeping the Soviet Union together with each republic being more independent but under the same leader. He wanted to call it the 'Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics' to keep the Russian initials as CCCP (USSR in English).