The president of the Soviet Union, officially the president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, abbreviated as president of the USSR, was the head of state of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from 15 March 1990 to 25 December 1991.

The State Committee on the State of Emergency, abbreviated as SCSE, was a self-proclaimed political body in the Soviet Union that existed from 19 to 21 August 1991. It included a group of eight high-level Soviet officials within the Soviet government, the Communist Party, and the KGB, who attempted a coup d'état against Mikhail Gorbachev on 19 August 1991. The American publicist Georges Obolensky called it the Gang of Eight. The coup ultimately failed, with the provisional government collapsing by 22 August 1991 and several of the conspirators being prosecuted by the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation.