"We decided the fate of a huge country": politicians and public figures - on the 1991 Belovezhskaya agreements

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, crisis phenomena began to grow in the socio-political sphere and the economy of the Soviet Union, and centrifugal tendencies sharply intensified.

According to experts, the reforms carried out by the head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, did not help resolve the contradictions that existed in the country.

On March 17, 1991, a referendum was held in nine of the 15 republics of the USSR, over 76% of the participants in which were in favor of preserving the Union. Based on the results of the negotiations that Mikhail Gorbachev held with representatives of the republics, a draft of a new union treaty was developed, which assumed weakening of ties between the republics. However, a group of representatives of the allied leadership opposed the signing of the updated treaty. This led to the creation of the State Committee for the State of Emergency in the USSR. An attempt by members of the State Emergency Committee to take power in the Soviet Union into their own hands was unsuccessful. Union republics began to declare their independence.

In November 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev agreed with representatives of some of the republics to sign an updated union agreement on December 9.

But on December 1, a referendum was held in Ukraine, most of the participants in which voted for independence. 

On December 8, 1991, the presidents of the RSFSR and Ukraine, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk, as well as the chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus, Stanislav Shushkevich, signed agreements in the government sanatorium Viskuli (Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus) on the dissolution of the USSR and the creation of the CIS.

RT talked about the historical role of the Belovezhskaya Agreements with Russian politicians and public figures.

Stanislav Shushkevich, in 1991 - Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus

- My grades are not important, since I am one of the authors. But what matters is the assessments made by others, such as Swedish diplomats. They said that this document on the creation of the CIS is a masterpiece of legitimate diplomacy at the end of the second millennium. I believe that this phrase characterizes the document that we have adopted. It is a long story how we came to the adoption of this document. We have gathered on a completely different occasion. We, Ukraine and Belarus, wanted Russia to help us with oil and gas, but we realized that there was no point in turning to another permissive - Gorbachev, who, in general, was not really needed, since he always spoke out against serious decisions and always was not guilty of anything. So we wondered who we are. Then Gennady Eduardovich Burbulis (at that time - First Deputy Prime Minister of the RSFSR. -

) proposed such a phrase that the USSR, as a geopolitical reality and a subject of international law, ceases to exist.

In the end, we all agreed that this phrase should be included in our document.

And since she entered, it was necessary to string meat on this bone ... At the same time, we actually preserved the confederation, because if you look at the very definition of a confederation, then the CIS is the confederation of the republics of the former USSR.

• Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States dated December 8, 1991. Photocopy.

  Signatures-autographs of S. Shushkevich, V. Kebich (for the Republic of Belarus);

  B. Yeltsin, G. Burbulis (for the RSFSR);

  L. Kravchuk, V. Fokina (for Ukraine)

• © Rosarkhiv

Chairman of the political party "Russian National Union" Sergei Baburin, in 1991 - People's Deputy of the RSFSR

- The Belovezhskaya agreement is a catastrophic action to destroy the traditional Russian civilization, the union that has been forming for a thousand years. I learned that they had been signed in the morning when I arrived at work at the Supreme Soviet. Near the entrance to the building, we saw parapet with sand and special forces with a machine gun aimed at those entering. We realized that something serious was going on. There was no such protection even in August 1991. And after that we learned that some kind of document was signed in Belarus - which one is not clear, but very serious. We learned about its contents only the next day. It was an agreement, the preamble of which fixed the end of the existence of the USSR as a geopolitical reality. This was the main point of this agreement, which was formally dedicated to the creation of the CIS.But in reality, the creation of the CIS was intended only to soften the information about the destruction of a single country.

Head of the faction "Fair Russia - For Truth" in the State Duma of the Russian Federation Sergey Mironov

- I would not exaggerate the role of the Belovezhskaya Agreements in the collapse of the Soviet Union.

By December 1991, the collapse of the USSR had become a fait accompli.

And the Belovezhskaya agreements only stated this, legally securing the situation.

To believe that the Union collapsed at once and only as a result of a meeting of three leaders in the Belarusian reserve is a strong simplification that does not give an understanding of the nature of what happened.

The ending of any drama can be vivid and memorable.

But the finale itself, without analyzing everything that happened to it, can say little about any phenomenon or event.

And the meeting in Belovezhskaya Pushcha was preceded by many events: the August coup attempt, the subsequent adoption by almost all republics of acts of state independence, the referendum on the independence of Ukraine on December 1.

The logic of events naturally led to a well-known denouement.

• Ukrainian referendum December 1, 1991

• © AP Photo / Boris Yurchenko

But I would still focus on the positive role of the Belovezhskaya Agreements, which consists in the fact that the foundations of relations between the former Soviet republics were laid in the post-Soviet period.

These foundations proved to be quite viable.

They still support the structures of the CIS, and integration projects in the post-Soviet space are directly connected with them.

This is the Union State of Russia and Belarus, and the CSTO, and the Eurasian Economic Union.

From this point of view, it is fair to regard the Belovezhskaya Agreements not only as the end of the USSR, but also as the beginning of a new era in the construction of interstate relations between countries that were previously parts of one state.

LDPR Chairman Vladimir Zhirinovsky

- On December 8, 1991, a serious crime was committed by three people.

The three of them - Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich - decided the fate of a huge country.

How is this possible, if in March of the same year the citizens of the USSR voted to preserve the Union?

History shows us today what role the Belavezha Accords played in the lives of citizens of all Soviet republics.

Russia went through wars in Chechnya, terrorist attacks, poverty, default, shock therapy, banditry.

The Baltics live on the outskirts of Europe, and the population is steadily declining.

Ukraine got a civil war.

There is poverty in Central Asia and there has also been a series of civil wars.

Belarus lives in poverty.

Georgia got problems. 

• In this building, on December 8, 1991, an agreement was signed on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

  Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Viskuli, Belarus

• RIA News

• © Yuri Ivanov

Vitaly Tretyakov, Dean of the School of Economics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, in the 1990s - editor-in-chief of Nezavisimaya Gazeta

- I assess the Belovezhskaya agreements as, in principle, illegal, but at that historical moment it was the logical conclusion of the last stage of Gorbachev's rule. Gorbachev's policy led the USSR to the theoretical possibility of disintegration. And since August 1991, the process has already moved towards the inevitable liquidation of the Soviet Union. So I must admit that Shushkevich, Yeltsin and Kravchuk, with all my negative attitude towards them, simply fixed what had already actually been done by the previous policy of the Union authorities and, naturally, the republican authorities, including themselves. This was all a natural result of the policy of Gorbachev and everyone he brought to power in the republics. In short, my personal attitude is as follows: a sad, but, alas, inevitable event happened.

Deputy of the Moscow City Duma Sergei Mitrokhin, formerly a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation from the Yabloko party:

- The historical role of the Belovezhskaya agreements is colossal.

There are parties that accuse the authors of the Belovezhskaya Agreements that they destroyed the USSR.

But in fact, the communists themselves had a hand in this, because there was such a concept of national policy pursued by the Bolsheviks, in which the formal independence of the republics of the USSR was given an exaggerated meaning, emphasis was placed on this.

This led to the fact that the republics received the right to secede from the USSR.

It is clear that this was purely symbolic, but when the USSR weakened after perestroika, this symbolic meaning turned into a legal one.

Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich relied on the legal realities of the USSR constitution, which allowed the exit.

Thus, the preparation for the Belovezhskaya agreements turned out to be lengthy.

Responsibility for them is borne not only by those who signed them, but also by those who took steps in this direction.

With the political will of the key republics of the USSR and their leaders, the Belovezhskaya Agreements could have been avoided.

And that would be the right decision.

The USSR had to try to rebuild on other principles.

There were economic prerequisites for this, but the political selfishness of these people outweighed considerations of the common good of their peoples.

So what happened happened.

Director Karen Shakhnazarov

- The role of the Belovezhskaya agreements is fundamental. In my opinion, this was a reorganization of the empire. The USSR was turning into the Russian Federation, but the empire's raison d'être remained the same. After all, our empire was constantly being rebuilt, for example, in 1917 ... In 1991, the slogan “Down with the empire!” Sounded, but as a result, it is being recreated in new forms and under a new name. At the same time, to make it clear, I have a good attitude to the idea of ​​empire. I consider it a natural form of the state's existence. It has positive and negative sides. Empires generate global culture and communication. And in my understanding, 1991 was not the collapse of the Soviet empire, it was its reorganization in a new format, which is now called the Russian Federation. 

Although my reaction to the agreements themselves was, in principle, negative, everyone at that time had a certain element of hope.

They announced that this is not a complete destruction of the USSR, that there will be a CIS.

I think that many had similar illusions.

This was, of course, the trick of those who signed these agreements.

Member of the Federal Political Council of the Growth Party Sergey Stankevich, in 1991 - member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and First Deputy Chairman of the Moscow Council

- The Belovezhskaya agreement recorded what had already happened before December 1991 - the collapse of the USSR. This was their historical significance; they recognized the reality of disintegration. This was not some kind of fiction or anticipation of events. After the coup failed in August 1991, the leaders of the republics, ready to sign a union treaty a week ago, ran away from Moscow. All declared their independence. Moscow tried to persuade the republics to return to the negotiating table, not to rush, not to break ties. But practically no one wanted to return. After that, we came up with a working idea - to preserve the federal core in the person of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan gave its preliminary consent to this. All that remained was to persuade Belarus and Ukraine. Actually, for the sake of this, the meeting was appointed.

But Ukraine has shown intransigence. Most of its citizens voted for independence in a referendum. It was in such a situation that the Russian delegation went to Belarus.

The result of the meeting, taking into account the position of Ukraine and Belarus, was the following concept: to recognize the fact of the collapse of the USSR and create the Commonwealth of Independent States, as a preparation for possible reintegration.

And then I took it critically, and now.

I believe that not everything possible was done to preserve the union core.

And even if it was not even possible to create the Union in the form we had conceived, it was still necessary not to recognize the fact of the collapse of the Union and to negotiate with each republic separately about whether it is ready to maintain certain close relations with Russia, and on what conditions to recognize independence.

Russia did not use this important diplomatic resource.

I think this is a mistake.

We have lost a lot on this.

• Moscow Kremlin

• © Wikimedia

Sergey Filatov, in the 1990s - First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation and Head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation

- It was a forced situation, for which no one was ready, and no one aspired to.

Burbulis phoned me from there and said that they approached to sign the Belovezhskaya agreements.

Since there was emptiness around, and since August there was practically no leadership, I generally took it normally, without any negativity.

In principle, it seemed to me that this agreement worked exactly for what we adopted the declaration of sovereignty.

That is, we moved away from the roof of the Union and made an independent decision, an independent program of economic and political development.

Since there was no such opportunity before and the entire economy of Russia belonged to the USSR.

For me, this was a positive step for the development of the Russian economy and political system.

Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Dmitry Novikov

- The Belovezhskaya Agreement is one of the most dramatic events in the history of our country from all points of view. It is very sad that people who, before that for several years in a row, had participated in a propaganda campaign to expose the shortcomings and vices of the Soviet regime, who spoke about the need to form a rule of law, about the supremacy of human rights, about democracy and everything else like that, cynically trampled on all these norms at the signing of the Belovezhskaya agreements. They violated the constitution and the will of citizens, who in the same year, only in March, in a referendum, spoke in favor of preserving the Union. And this will was obligatory for the authorities to fulfill.

The events of 1991 teach us many lessons.

In particular, regarding the fact that officials responsible for upholding the sovereignty and security of their own citizens are not only entitled, but also obliged to use power and force when the country and the people are in danger.

What happened in Bialowieza was a coup d'etat and deserved immediate action, followed by a trial.

It is about Gorbachev's duty to arrest the Belovezhskaya Putschists.

The Belavezha Accords is not only a tragedy for all the peoples that were part of the Soviet Union, but an event that seriously changed the balance of world forces.

Ruslan Khasbulatov, in 1991 - First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

- The role of the Belovezhskaya agreement is obvious.

They put an end to the existence of a huge state, the second superpower in the world.

Then it was fashionable to believe that the capitalist world, which in 1917 disintegrated into capitalist and socialist, reunited.

But in reality the destruction of the world took place.

Prior to that, the two supergiants maintained a conditional balance and conducted rather peaceful constructive cooperation.

All national liberation, nationalist and other movements were then rather tightly controlled by either the USA or the USSR.

And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this equilibrium was gone.