Translated material
Without the USSR
The death of the Soviet Union came earlier than 15 years ago
On December 7, 1991, important guests arrived at the Belarusian government residence “Viskuli” near Brest to the Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich - Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk, who had been elected President of Ukraine a week before.The purpose of the meeting was to officially announce the death of the USSR.
It is difficult to determine the role of these particular individuals in the history of the collapse of the Soviet empire, especially since there were many more individuals in this history. The main thing is that no empire falls apart in one day or even in one year. In just one day, the three of them could only figure out how to confirm her death and issue the appropriate certificate.
The preamble to the document that came to light as a result of the Belovezhskaya meeting says verbatim the following: “We, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation (RSFSR), Ukraine, as the founding states of the USSR, signatories of the Union Treaty of 1922, hereinafter referred to as the High Contracting Parties, We state that the USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality ceases to exist.”
In fact, the last and decisive blow, one might say a control shot to the head of the USSR, was struck three and a half months before the Viskuley State Emergency Committee. Despite the fact that the putschists themselves claimed that they were trying to “save and strengthen” the Soviet Union, in fact they opposed the attempt to preserve it - on August 19, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev was supposed to sign an updated union treaty with the republics in Novo-Ogarevo. After the failure of the putsch, the union republics, one after another, began to officially proclaim their independence. And this process was completed even before any Belovezhskaya agreements.
But much earlier, a year and a half before them, in the spring of 1990, the so-called “parade of sovereignties” began in the USSR, in which not only union republics, but even autonomous republics participated. To stop the collapse of the Union, a referendum was held on March 17, 1991 on the issue of preserving the USSR, and 76% of those participating in it said “yes” to the Union.
Much less often they remember that six of the 15 republics refused to participate in it, as well as the fact that on the same day another referendum was held - on the establishment of the post of president of the RSFSR, elected by popular vote, and almost 70% of Russians also said “yes” ".
Other attempts were also made to save the USSR - at least in the form of a confederation, the creation of an economic union, etc. There were also desperate attempts to unite the efforts of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, who were in conflict with each other, on the basis of necessary economic reforms (the “500 days” program). The response of the Soviet party activists to this was the “monetary reform” of Prime Minister Pavlov, empty shelves in stores and doubling of prices within a few months.
Perhaps the empire had a chance to prolong its existence , but there was no chance when its usual sources of resources began to become scarce - the system was not set up to search for new ones. Attempts to preserve itself as a superpower began to undermine the Union, at least economically, a very long time ago, and from the late 70s - early 80s, signs of a crisis could already be found even in the official reports of the State Statistics Committee. But the preserved and protected system turned out to be incapable of self-reform. And capable only of agony.
The debate about whether it was possible to save the Union or make its collapse less painful will continue for a long time. One thing is clear: the process of disintegration could well have turned out to be much more painful and bloody. The example of Yugoslavia is before everyone's eyes. And, let’s say, interethnic conflicts in the Caucasus began “within” the USSR.
It is clear that today, watching Russian-Ukrainian or Russian-Georgian conflicts, we remember with nostalgia the times when we looked like one Soviet nation. But it’s not even humanly worth explaining what happened by the events that took place on a December night in Belovezhskaya Pushcha 15 years ago.