When the leaders of three Slavic Soviet republics met at a hunting lodge on Dec. 8, 1991, the USSR received a death blow. A nuclear superpower was dissolved without shedding “a single drop of blood,” said one leader. But that would come years later.
FILE - Russia's President Boris Yeltsin, second right, Ukraine's President Leonid Kravchuk, second left, Belarus' leader Stanislav Shushkevich, third left, Russia's State Secretary Gennady Burbulis, right, Belarus' Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kebich, third right, and Ukraine's Prime Minister Vitold Fokin, left, sign an agreement terminating the Soviet Union and declaring the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States in Viskuli, Belarus, on Dec. 8, 1991.
But that blood would be spilled later — in multiple conflicts across the former Soviet republics once yoked under Moscow’s tight control. Shushkevich argued that he and the other leaders saw no point in Gorbachev’s efforts to keep the remaining 12 Soviet republics together. The Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia already had seceded and the failed August coup against Gorbachev by hard-line members of the Communist Party had eroded his authority and encouraged other republics to seek independence.
In the AP interview, Shushkevich said he didn’t expect Gorbachev, whose power was waning rapidly, to try to arrest them. Gorbachev blamed Yeltsin, his archrival, for spearheading the Soviet collapse in a bid to take over the Kremlin. Yeltsin, who died in 2007 at the age of 76, had defended his action by saying the USSR was doomed. The Belovezha agreement, he said, was the only way to avoid a conflict between the central government and the independence-minded republics.
“Kravchuk was focused on Ukraine’s independence,” Shushkevich said. “He was proud that Ukraine declared its independence in a referendum and he was elected president on Dec. 1, 1991.”“The Ukrainian independence referendum and the subsequent decision by the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet to disavow the 1922 Treaty on creation of the USSR put a political and legal completion to the process of disintegration,” Shakhrai said.
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