The Dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 That Ended Seven Decades of Soviet Power

Mikhail Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on 11 March 1985. His reform programmes perestroika (economic restructuring) and glasnost (political openness) weakened the institutional control of the Communist Party across 1985-1990. The 1989 collapse of communist governments across Eastern Europe — beginning with Poland in June 1989 and concluding with the execution of Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu on 25 December 1989 — was permitted by Gorbachev’s renunciation of the Brezhnev Doctrine.

Inside the Soviet Union the constituent republics began declaring sovereignty across 1990. Lithuania declared independence on 11 March 1990. The Russian Federation declared sovereignty on 12 June 1990 under Boris Yeltsin — directly challenging the central Soviet authority of Gorbachev.

The August 1991 coup

A group of hardline Communist officials led by Vice President Gennady Yanayev detained Gorbachev at his Crimean dacha on 19 August 1991 and declared a State Emergency Committee. Tanks were deployed to central Moscow. The coup leaders broadcast that Gorbachev was incapacitated.

The coup failed within three days. Yeltsin — the elected President of the Russian Federation — climbed onto a tank outside the Russian White House on 19 August 1991 and read a defiant statement to the crowd. The military refused to suppress the demonstrations. The coup leaders surrendered on 21 August 1991.

Gorbachev returned to Moscow on 22 August 1991 but his political position was destroyed. The Communist Party was suspended on 23 August 1991 and banned on Russian soil on 6 November 1991.

The Belovezha Accords

The presidents of the three Slavic Soviet republics — Russia (Yeltsin), Ukraine (Leonid Kravchuk), and Belarus (Stanislav Shushkevich) — met at the Viskuli hunting lodge in the Belovezha Forest in Belarus on 8 December 1991. They signed the Belovezha Accords declaring that the Soviet Union “as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality” had ceased to exist and that the three signatory states would form a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

The CIS was expanded to include eight further republics at the Alma-Ata Protocol on 21 December 1991. The Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and Georgia (which joined the CIS in 1993) declined the initial framework.

25 December 1991

Gorbachev recognised that the Soviet Union no longer functionally existed. He delivered a televised resignation address at approximately 19:00 on 25 December 1991 transferring control of the Soviet nuclear arsenal to Yeltsin as the head of the Russian successor state. The Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin Senate Dome at 19:32 on 25 December 1991 and replaced with the Russian Federation tricolour.

The Council of Republics of the Supreme Soviet voted itself out of existence on 26 December 1991. Fifteen successor states emerged:

— Russian Federation — assumed UN Security Council seat, nuclear forces, embassies, debt — Ukraine — surrendered its nuclear weapons under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum — Belarus — same as Ukraine — Kazakhstan — same as Ukraine — Plus Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan

What followed

The Russian economic transition under Yeltsin’s “shock therapy” reform programme of January 1992 produced a collapse in living standards. Russian GDP fell approximately 40 percent across 1991-1998. Life expectancy for Russian men fell from 64 in 1990 to 57 in 1994 — attributed to alcoholism, suicide, and collapse of healthcare.

Yeltsin resigned on 31 December 1999 and was succeeded by acting President Vladimir Putin, who was elected in his own right on 26 March 2000. Putin has remained the Russian political authority since.

Gorbachev was awarded the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize. He ran for the Russian presidency in 1996 and received approximately 0.5 percent of the vote. He died on 30 August 2022 aged 91.