Formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States
The leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met in a hunting lodge in December 1991 and dissolved the Soviet Union. The state had been coming apart for two years. The Baltic republics had declared independence, the referendum of March 1991 on a renewed union had been boycotted by six republics, and the coup attempt of August had destroyed the central government's authority and made Yeltsin rather than Gorbachev the effective power in Russia. Ukraine's referendum on 1 December returned 90 per cent for independence, which removed the possibility of any union worth the name. Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich met at Belovezhskaya Pushcha in Belarus on 8 December and signed an agreement declaring that the USSR as a subject of international law was ceasing to exist and establishing a Commonwealth of Independent States in its place. They telephoned the American president before they telephoned Gorbachev. Eight more republics joined at Alma-Ata on 21 December, and Gorbachev resigned on the 25th; the flag came down over the Kremlin that evening. The commonwealth itself was designed to be a mechanism for a civilised divorce — nuclear weapons consolidated in Russia, borders recognised, some economic coordination — and it functioned mainly as a way of dividing the assets and debts. Georgia joined late and left in 2008, Ukraine never ratified the charter and withdrew in 2018, and Turkmenistan is an associate. It has almost no practical function now. The dissolution of a nuclear superpower without a civil war is the fact worth registering. Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan gave up the weapons on their territory over the following four years in exchange for security assurances, which is a bargain that has been reconsidered since 2014.
- Year: 1991 CE
- Category: Political
