On June 12, 1991, Russia held its first nationwide direct open elections for the President of the RSFSR. A total of 79,498,240 people participated in the voting. Six candidates ran for the position of President: Boris Yeltsin, Vadim Bakatin, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Albert Makashov, Nikolai Ryzhkov, Aman Tuleyev. The majority of voters supported Boris Yeltsin. He received 57.3% of the votes and became the first President of Russia. Along with him, Aleksandr Rutskoy was elected Vice President. After the election, Yeltsin's main slogans were the fight against the privileges of the nomenklatura and Russia's independence from the USSR. One of Yeltsin's first presidential decrees concerned the elimination of party organizations at enterprises. Yeltsin began negotiations on signing a new union treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev and the leaders of other union republics. In December 1991, Boris Yeltsin held talks with Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk and Belarusian parliamentary leader Stanislav Shushkevich about creating the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On December 8, in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, an agreement was signed to create the CIS, and soon most of the union republics joined the Commonwealth by signing the Alma-Ata Declaration on December 21. On December 25, 1991, Boris Yeltsin assumed full presidential power in Russia following the resignation of USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev and the de facto dissolution of the USSR.