Article 1 of the Belavezha Accords, signed on December 8, 1991 at the Viskuli government residence in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha forest on the Belarusian-Polish border, declared that the USSR “as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, is ceasing its existence.” The signatories were Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus. Eleven more Soviet republics acceded to the Accords at Alma-Ata on December 21, 1991, and the Soviet Union — for 69 years one of the two poles of the international system — was formally over.
The most detailed account is Vladislav Zubok’s Collapse (2021), which draws on Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian archival sources. The Russian-language accounts of the negotiations by the participants themselves — Shushkevich’s Crushing of the USSR (2001) and the Yeltsin-era memoir Confession on a Given Subject — are valuable as primary sources. The text of the Accords has been published in multiple editions; an authoritative English translation is in the 1992 Congressional Research Service report on the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The Negotiations
The three leaders had been in telephone contact throughout the autumn of 1991. The Ukrainian referendum and presidential election of December 1, 1991, which produced 90.32 percent for independence and elected Leonid Kravchuk as president, was the proximate cause of the December meeting. Without Ukraine, any reformed Union was not the Union. The Russian and Belarusian leaders agreed to meet in Minsk on December 7; the meeting was extended on December 8 to the Viskuli residence in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the Belavezha Accords were signed that afternoon.
The Viskuli residence had been a Soviet government retreat. The setting is in a forest reserve that straddles the Belarusian-Polish border and is the remnant of the primeval forest that once covered much of the European plain. The Viskuli lodge, originally a hunting cabin, had been the site of the Brezhnev-Carter negotiations of 1979 and of other Soviet-bloc summits. The symbolism of the location was not lost on the participants.
The negotiations were conducted by the three leaders and a small group of aides. The Russian side included Gennady Burbulis, the state secretary of the Russian Federation, and Andrei Kozyrev, the foreign minister. The Ukrainian side included the prime minister Vitold Fokin, the foreign minister Anatoly Zlenko, and the chairman of the Supreme Soviet Ivan Plyushch. The Belarusian side included the prime minister Vyacheslav Kebich, the foreign minister Pyotr Kravchenko, and the head of the Belarusian parliament Dzmitry Pauliuchenka. The substantive work was done in working sessions; the final text was signed in a brief ceremony.
The principal substantive questions were the same five that had divided the Soviet Union since 1990. The first was the political status of the Union: the three leaders agreed that the Union had ceased to exist, with the Belavezha Accords explicitly terminating “the activities of the institutions of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the territories of the States members of the Commonwealth.” The second was the membership of the new Commonwealth: the agreement was open to all former Soviet republics except the Baltic states, which were understood to have already left the Union by the spring of 1990. The third was the question of nuclear weapons: the signatories committed to the principle of no nuclear weapons on the territories of the non-Russian successor states, with the detailed provisions to be settled in subsequent agreements (and, in fact, settled in the Lisbon Protocol of 1992 and the Budapest Memorandum of 1994). The fourth was the question of the Soviet Union’s foreign debt: the three leaders agreed to share the debt on a formula based on the size of their economies. The fifth was the question of the Soviet Union’s foreign assets, including the diplomatic missions, the foreign-currency reserves — the residual interests in the Cold War–era property abroad.
The Text
The Belavezha Accords is a short document, ten articles in length. Article 1 establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States as “an international organization” and confirms its “open” character. Article 2 establishes that the member states commit to “the development of equal and mutually beneficial cooperation of the peoples and states” in political, economic, military, humanitarian, and cultural fields. Article 3 establishes the member states’ commitment to the territorial integrity of the Union and the inviolability of borders. Article 4 establishes the principle of joint control of strategic military forces during a transitional period. Article 5 establishes the principle that the member states would develop a single economic space on the basis of market principles. Articles 6 through 9 establish the organs of the Commonwealth and the procedure for accession. Article 10 confirms the principle that the Commonwealth was open to other former Soviet republics.
The most important phrase, both politically and in subsequent interpretation, is the language of Article 1 that the “activities of the institutions of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the territories of the States members of the Commonwealth are terminated.” The phrase unambiguously dissolved the central institutions. There was no provision for a transitional central government. The CIS, as a political body, was not designed to replace the Union but to mark its end.
The Reaction
The Accords were a complete surprise to the rest of the Soviet government. Gorbachev was in Moscow, working on the new union treaty that he hoped to sign in the coming weeks. He was informed of the Belavezha Accords by telephone on the evening of December 8. The reaction in the Russian and Ukrainian governments was celebratory. The reaction in the Soviet government was not.
Gorbachev made one last attempt to preserve a meaningful center. He met with Yeltsin on December 23, 1991. The result was a transitional arrangement: Gorbachev would remain in office until the end of the year, after which the Soviet presidency would be abolished. The arrangement was a face-saving formula. On December 25, Gorbachev appeared on Soviet television and resigned. The Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin at 7:32 p.m.
The reaction in the rest of the Soviet Union was mixed. The Baltic states had already declared independence in 1990 and were not surprised. The other republics studied the text carefully. Eleven of them — the five Central Asian, the three Caucasian, and Moldova, Ukraine, and Belarus — signed the Alma-Ata Protocol on December 21, 1991, acceding to the Belavezha Accords. The other two, Azerbaijan and Ukraine, were already signatories of the original Accords. The 12 successor states of the CIS were now in being. The only major exception was the Baltic states, which did not join the CIS.
The Significance
The Belavezha Accords are the founding document of the post-Soviet space. They dissolved the central state, established the principle of a loose association of independent states, and confirmed the principle that the successor states would be equal members of a new international body. The CIS, however, has not been a successful international organization. It has provided a framework for cooperation on security and economic matters, but it has not been able to mediate the principal post-Soviet conflicts, including the conflicts in Moldova (Transnistria), Georgia (Abkhazia and South Ossetia), and the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The most important effect of the Accords is therefore not the establishment of the CIS, which has been a largely nominal institution. The most important effect is the dissolution of the Union. The decision that the central state had ceased to exist was the decision that mattered. The subsequent arrangements — the CIS, the Alma-Ata Protocol, the Lisbon Protocol, the Budapest Memorandum — have been attempts to manage the consequences of that decision. The decision itself, taken in a forest lodge on the Belarusian-Polish border on December 8, 1991, has not been reversed. The 15 successor states remain the principal fact of the post-Soviet space.