The Union of Sovereign States was the proposed name of a reorganization of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics into a new confederal entity. Proposed by President of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, the proposal was an attempt to avert the collapse of the Soviet Union. The proposal was never implemented in the wake of the August Coup and the eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The overall proposal was resurrected as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).