That alienated some large cities made up of Russian citizens, which led to attempts to create or recreate even smaller republics.
"[3] For instance, Tatarstan, with a plurality population of Muslim Tatars, declared itself an independent state with the right to self-determination in 1990 and claimed ownership of its massive oil reserves.
[6] As the splits became more and more pronounced, the Soviet government began speaking of returning to the status quo by means that would not have been considered earlier.
Gorbachev responded to this by putting marketization and constitutional amendments on hold in order to focus on reorganizing the Soviet Union to maintain its unity.
[3] The vacuum of power that had been created was filled with the arrival of Boris Yeltsin, who attempted to gain support for himself and denounced Gorbachev.
The Soviet Union was declared to have ended officially with the signing of the Belavezha Accords between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.
After the new government reorganized itself, Yeltsin found himself in a position that should have offered him the ability to change Russia as he saw fit, but it was undermined by the Russian Parliament.
Pressured to find a way to go around the Parliament, Yeltsin made major concessions to his subject regions with the signing of the Federal Treaty in an attempt to gain its favor in his legal battle.
While the constituent republics had obtained a large amount of autonomy and sovereignty after the Soviet collapse, their constitutions still considered them to be unified with Russia in one form or another.