1988 Moscow loses control In 1988, Gorbachev started to lose control of two regions of the Soviet Union, as the Baltic republics were now leaning towards independence, and the Caucasus
descended into violence and civil war. On 1 July 1988, the fourth and last day of a bruising 19th Party Conference, Gorbachev won the backing of the tired delegates for his last-minute proposal to create a new supreme legislative body called the
Congress of People's Deputies. Frustrated by the old guard's resistance, Gorbachev embarked on a set of constitutional changes to attempt separation of party and state, thereby isolating his Party opponents. Detailed proposals for the new Congress of People's Deputies were published on 2 October 1988, and to enable the creation of the new legislature. The Supreme Soviet, during its 29 November – 1 December 1988, session, implemented amendments to the
1977 Soviet Constitution, enacted a law on electoral reform, and set the date of the election for 26 March 1989. On 29 November 1988, the Soviet Union ceased
jamming all foreign radio stations, allowing Soviet citizens – for the first time since a brief period in the 1960s – to have unrestricted access to news sources beyond Communist Party control.
Baltic republics In 1986 and 1987, Latvia had been in the vanguard of the Baltic states in pressing for reform. In 1988, Estonia took over the lead role with the foundation of the Soviet Union's first popular front and starting to influence state policy. The
Popular Front of Estonia was founded in April 1988. On 16 June 1988, Gorbachev replaced
Karl Vaino, the "old guard" leader of the
Communist Party of Estonia, with the comparatively liberal
Vaino Väljas. In late June 1988, Väljas bowed to pressure from the Estonian Popular Front and legalized the flying of the old blue-black-white flag of Estonia, and agreed to a new state language law that made Estonian the official language of the Republic. On 2 October, the Popular Front formally launched its political platform at a two-day congress. Väljas attended, gambling that the Front could help Estonia become a model of economic and political revival, while moderating separatist and other radical tendencies. On 16 November 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a declaration of national sovereignty under which Estonian laws would take precedence over those of the Soviet Union. Estonia's parliament also laid claim to the republic's natural resources including land, inland waters, forests, mineral deposits, and to the means of industrial production, agriculture, construction, state banks, transportation, and municipal services within the territory of Estonia's borders. At the same time the
Estonian Citizens' Committees started registration of citizens of the
Republic of Estonia to carry out the elections of the
Congress of Estonia. rally of about 250,000 in
Lithuania, whose
Sąjūdis movement helped restore independence (August 1988) The
Popular Front of Latvia was founded in June 1988. On 4 October, Gorbachev replaced
Boris Pugo, the "old guard" leader of the
Communist Party of Latvia, with the more liberal Jānis Vagris. In October 1988 Vagris bowed to pressure from the Latvian Popular Front and legalized flying the former carmine red-and-white flag of independent Latvia, and on 6 October he passed a law making
Latvian the country's official language. Karabakh authorities mobilised over a thousand police to stop the march, with the resulting clashes leaving two Azerbaijanis dead. These deaths, announced on state radio, led to the
Sumgait pogrom. Between 26 February and 1 March, the city of
Sumgait (Azerbaijan) saw violent anti-Armenian rioting during which at least 32 people were killed. The authorities totally lost control and occupied the city with paratroopers and tanks; nearly all of the 14,000 Armenian residents of Sumgait fled. Gorbachev refused to make any changes to the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, which remained part of Azerbaijan. He instead sacked the Communist Party Leaders in both Republics in response – on 21 May 1988,
Kamran Baghirov was replaced by
Abdurrahman Vazirov as First Secretary of the
Azerbaijan Communist Party. From 23 July to September 1988, a group of Azerbaijani intellectuals began working for a new organization called the
Popular Front of Azerbaijan, loosely based on the
Estonian Popular Front. On 17 September, when gun battles broke out between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis near
Stepanakert, two soldiers were killed and more than two dozen injured. This led to almost tit-for-tat ethnic polarization in Nagorno-Karabakh's two main towns: the Azerbaijani minority was expelled from Stepanakert, and the Armenian minority was expelled from
Shusha. On 17 November 1988, in response to the exodus of tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, a series of mass demonstrations began in
Baku's Lenin Square, lasting 18 days and attracting half a million demonstrators in support of their compatriots in that region. On 5 December 1988, the Soviet police and civilian militiamen moved in, cleared the square by force, and imposed a curfew that lasted ten months. The rebellion of fellow Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh had an immediate effect in Armenia itself. Daily demonstrations, which began in the Armenian capital
Yerevan on 18 February, initially attracted few people, but each day the Nagorno-Karabakh issue became increasingly prominent and the numbers swelled. On 20 February, a 30,000-strong crowd demonstrated in the
Theater Square, by 22 February, there were 100,000, the next day 300,000, and a transport strike was declared, by 25 February, there were close to a million demonstratorsmore than a quarter of Armenia's population. This was the first of the large, peaceful public demonstrations that would become a feature of communism's overthrow in Prague, Berlin, and, ultimately, Moscow. Leading Armenian intellectuals and nationalists, including the future first president of independent Armenia
Levon Ter-Petrosyan, formed the eleven-member
Karabakh Committee to lead and organize the new movement. Also on 21 May, Gorbachev replaced
Karen Demirchyan with Suren Harutyunyan as First Secretary of the
Communist Party of Armenia. However, Harutyunyan quickly changed course and on 28 May, allowed Armenians to unfurl the red-blue-orange
First Armenian Republic flag for the first time in almost 70 years to mark the 1918 declaration of the First Republic. On 15 June 1988, the Armenian Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution formally approving the idea of Nagorno-Karabakh's unification as part of the republic. Armenia, formerly one of the most loyal republics, had suddenly turned into the leading rebel republic. On 5 July 1988, when a contingent of troops was sent in to remove demonstrators by force from Yerevan's
Zvartnots International Airport, shots were fired and one student protester was killed. In September, further large demonstrations in Yerevan led to the deployment of armored vehicles. In the autumn of 1988 almost all of the 200,000 Azerbaijani minority in Armenia was expelled by Armenian nationalists, with over 100 killed in the process. That, after the Sumgait pogrom earlier that year, which had been carried out by Azerbaijanis to ethnic Armenians and led to the expulsion of Armenians from Azerbaijan, was for many Armenians considered an act of revenge for the killings at Sumgait. On 25 November 1988, a military commandant took control of Yerevan as the Soviet government moved to prevent further ethnic violence. On 7 December 1988, the
Spitak earthquake struck, killing an estimated 25,000 to 50,000 people. When Gorbachev rushed back from a visit to the United States, he was so angered with being confronted by protesters calling for Nagorno-Karabakh to be made part of the Armenian Republic during a natural disaster that on 11 December 1988, he ordered that the entire
Karabakh Committee be arrested. In
Tbilisi, the capital of
Soviet Georgia, many demonstrators camped out in front of the republic's legislature in November 1988 calling for Georgia's independence and in support of Estonia's declaration of sovereignty.
Western republics Beginning in February 1988, the
Democratic Movement of Moldova, later the
Popular Front of Moldova, organized public meetings, demonstrations, and song festivals, which gradually grew in size and intensity. In the streets, the center of public manifestations was the
Stephen the Great Monument in Chișinău, and the adjacent park harboring
Aleea Clasicilor (The "
Alley of Classics [of Literature]"). The transition from "movement" (an informal association) to "front" (a formal association) was seen as a natural "upgrade" once a movement gained momentum with the public, and the Soviet authorities no longer dared to crack down on it. On 26 April 1988, about 500 people participated in a march organized by the Ukrainian Cultural Club on Kiev's
Khreshchatyk Street to mark the second anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, carrying placards with slogans like "Openness and Democracy to the End". Between May and June 1988,
Ukrainian Catholics in western Ukraine celebrated the Millennium of Christianity in
Kievan Rus' in secret by holding services in the forests of Buniv,
Kalush, Hoshi, and Zarvanytsia. On 5 June 1988, as the official celebrations of the Millennium were held in Moscow, the Ukrainian Cultural Club hosted its own observances in Kiev at the monument to
Vladimir the Great, the grand prince of Kievan Rus'. On 16 June 1988, 6,000 to 8,000 people gathered in Lviv to hear speakers declare no confidence in the local list of delegates to the 19th Communist Party conference, to begin on 29 June. On 21 June, a rally in Lviv attracted 50,000 people who had heard about a revised delegate list. Authorities attempted to disperse the rally in front of Druzhba Stadium. On 7 July, 10,000 to 20,000 people witnessed the launch of the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. On 17 July, a group of 10,000 gathered in the village
Zarvanytsia for Millennium services celebrated by Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Bishop Pavlo Vasylyk. The militia tried to disperse attendees, but it turned out to be the largest gathering of Ukrainian Catholics since Stalin outlawed the Church in 1946. On 4 August, which came to be known as "Bloody Thursday", local authorities violently suppressed a demonstration organized by the Democratic Front to Promote Perestroika. Forty-one people were detained, fined, or sentenced to 15 days of administrative arrest. On 1 September, local authorities violently displaced 5,000 students at a public meeting lacking official permission at
Ivan Franko State University. On 13 November 1988, approximately 10,000 people attended an officially sanctioned meeting organized by the cultural heritage organization
Spadschyna, the
Kiev University student club
Hromada, and the environmental groups
Zelenyi Svit ("Green World") and
Noosfera, to focus on ecological issues. From 14 to 18 November, 15 Ukrainian activists were among the 100 human-, national- and religious-rights advocates invited to discuss human rights with Soviet officials and a visiting delegation of the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (also known as the Helsinki Commission). On 10 December, hundreds gathered in Kiev to observe
International Human Rights Day at a rally organized by the Democratic Union. The unauthorized gathering resulted in the detention of local activists. The
Belarusian Popular Front was established in 1988 as a political party and cultural movement for democracy and independence, similar to the Baltic republics' popular fronts. The discovery of mass graves in
Kurapaty outside
Minsk by historian
Zianon Pazniak, the Belarusian Popular Front's first leader, gave additional momentum to the pro-democracy and pro-independence movement in Belarus. It claimed that the
NKVD performed secret killings in Kurapaty. Initially the Front had significant visibility because its numerous public actions almost always ended in clashes with the police and the
KGB.
1989 Moscow: limited democratization Spring 1989 saw the people of the Soviet Union exercising a democratic choice, albeit limited, for the first time since 1917, when they elected the new Congress of People's Deputies. Just as important was the uncensored live TV coverage of the legislature's deliberations, where people witnessed the previously feared Communist leadership being questioned and held accountable. This example fueled a limited experiment with democracy in
Poland, which quickly led to the toppling of the Communist government in Warsaw that summer and in turn sparked uprisings that overthrew governments in the other five Warsaw Pact countries before the end of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. This was also the year that
CNN became the first non-Soviet broadcaster allowed to beam its TV news programs to Moscow. Officially, CNN was available only to foreign guests in the
Savoy Hotel, but Muscovites quickly learned how to pick up signals on their home televisions. That had a major effect on how Soviets saw events in their country and made censorship almost impossible. , formerly exiled to
Gorky, was elected to the
Congress of People's Deputies in March 1989. The month-long nomination period for candidates for the
Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union lasted until 24 January 1989. For the next month, selection among the 7,531 district nominees took place at meetings organized by constituency-level electoral commissions. On 7 March, a final list of 5,074 candidates was published; about 85% were Party members. In the two weeks prior to the 1,500 district polls, elections to fill 750 reserved seats of public organizations, contested by 880 candidates, were held. Of these seats, 100 were allocated to the CPSU, 100 to the
All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions, 75 to the Communist Youth Union (
Komsomol), 75 to the Committee of Soviet Women, 75 to the War and Labour Veterans' Organization, and 325 to other organizations such as the
Academy of Sciences. The selection process was done in April. In the 26 March general elections, voter participation was an impressive 89.8%, and 1,958 (including 1,225 district seats) of the 2,250 CPD seats were filled. In district races, run-off elections were held in 76 constituencies on 2 and 9 April and fresh elections were organized on 14 and 20 April to 23 May, in the 199 remaining constituencies where the required absolute majority was not attained. and in the summer he formed the first opposition, the
Inter-regional Deputies Group, composed of
Russian nationalists and
liberals. Composing the final legislative group in the Soviet Union, those elected in 1989 played a vital part in reforms and the eventual breakup of the Soviet Union during the next two years. On 30 May 1989, Gorbachev proposed that local elections across the country, scheduled for November 1989, be postponed until early 1990 because there were still no laws governing the conduct of such elections. This was seen by some as a concession to local Party officials, who feared they would be swept from power in a wave of anti-establishment sentiment. On 25 October 1989, the Supreme Soviet voted to eliminate special seats for the Communist Party and other official organizations in union-level and republic-level elections, responding to sharp popular criticism that such reserved slots were undemocratic. After vigorous debate, the 542-member Supreme Soviet passed the measure 254–85 (with 36 abstentions). The decision required a constitutional amendment, ratified by the full congress, which met 12–25 December. It also passed measures that would allow direct elections for presidents of each of the 15 constituent republics. Gorbachev strongly opposed such a move during debate but was defeated. The vote expanded the power of republics in local elections, enabling them to decide for themselves how to organize voting. Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia had already proposed laws for direct presidential elections. Local elections in all the republics had already been scheduled to take place between December and March 1990. |alt=Map of the Eastern Bloc, with Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and the Soviet Union The six
Warsaw Pact countries of Eastern Europe, while nominally independent, were widely recognized as the
Soviet satellite states (along with
Mongolia). All had been occupied by the Soviet
Red Army in 1945, had Soviet-style socialist states imposed upon them, and had very restricted freedom of action in either domestic or international affairs. Any moves towards real independence were suppressed by military force – in the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the
Prague Spring in 1968. Gorbachev abandoned the oppressive and expensive
Brezhnev Doctrine, which mandated intervention in the Warsaw Pact states, in favor of non-intervention in the internal affairs of allies – jokingly termed the
Sinatra Doctrine in a reference to the
Frank Sinatra song "
My Way".
Poland was the first republic to democratize following the enactment of the
April Novelization, as agreed upon following the
Polish Round Table Agreement talks from February to April between the government and the
Solidarity trade union. The Polish Solidarity Union, as established through the 1980 August Accords, presented Lech Wałęsa as their candidate, who became the first democratically elected president of Poland. The elections in Poland inspired other Eastern European Soviet Nations to pursue peaceful democratic transitions, and soon the Pact began to dissolve itself. The last of the countries to overthrow Communist leadership,
Romania, only did so following the violent
Romanian revolution.
Baltic Chain of Freedom The
Baltic Way or Baltic Chain (also Chain of Freedom; , , , ) was a peaceful political demonstration on 23 August 1989. An estimated 2 million people joined hands to form a
human chain extending across
Estonia,
Latvia and
Lithuania, which had been forcibly reincorporated into the Soviet Union in 1944. The colossal demonstration marked the 50th anniversary of the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact that divided Eastern Europe into
spheres of influence and led to the
occupation of the Baltic states in 1940. Just months after the Baltic Way protests, in December 1989, the
Congress of People's Deputies acceptedand Gorbachev signedthe report by the
Yakovlev Commission condemning the secret protocols of the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact which led to the annexations of the three Baltic republics. In the March 1989 elections to the Congress of People's Deputies, 36 of the 42 deputies from Lithuania were candidates from the independent national movement
Sąjūdis. That was the greatest victory for any national organization within the Soviet Union and was a devastating revelation to the Lithuanian Communist Party of its growing unpopularity. On 7 December 1989, the
Communist Party of Lithuania, under the leadership of
Algirdas Brazauskas, split from the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union and abandoned its claim to have a constitutional "leading role" in politics. A smaller loyalist faction of the Communist Party, headed by hardliner
Mykolas Burokevičius, was established and remained affiliated with the party. However, Lithuania's governing Communist Party was formally independent from Moscow's control, a first for a Soviet republics and a political earthquake that prompted Gorbachev to arrange a visit to Lithuania the following month in a futile attempt to bring the local party back under control. The following year, the Communist Party lost power altogether in multiparty parliamentary elections, which had caused
Vytautas Landsbergis to become the first noncommunist leader (Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania) of Lithuania since its forced incorporation into the Soviet Union.
Caucasus in
Tbilisi,
Georgia On 16 July 1989, the
Popular Front of Azerbaijan held its first congress and elected
Abulfaz Elchibey, who would become president, as its chairman. On 19 August 600,000 protesters jammed Baku's Lenin Square (now Azadliq Square) to demand the release of political prisoners. In the second half of 1989, weapons were handed out in Nagorno-Karabakh. When Karabakhis got hold of small arms to replace hunting rifles and crossbows, casualties began to mount; bridges were blown up, roads were blockaded, and hostages were taken. In a new and effective tactic, the Popular Front launched a rail blockade of Armenia, which caused petrol and food shortages because 85 percent of Armenia's freight came from Azerbaijan. Under pressure from the Popular Front the Communist authorities in Azerbaijan started making concessions. On 25 September, they passed a sovereignty law that gave precedence to Azerbaijani law, and on 4 October, the Popular Front was permitted to register as a legal organization as long as it lifted the blockade. Transport communications between Azerbaijan and Armenia never fully recovered. Tensions continued to escalate and on 29 December, Popular Front activists seized local party offices in
Jalilabad, wounding dozens. On 31 May 1989, the 11 members of the Karabakh Committee, who had been imprisoned without trial in Moscow's
Matrosskaya Tishina prison, were released and returned home to a hero's welcome. Soon after his release,
Levon Ter-Petrosyan, an academic, was elected chairman of the anti-communist opposition
Pan-Armenian National Movement, and later stated that it was in 1989 that he first began considering full independence as his goal. On 7 April 1989, Soviet troops and armored personnel carriers were sent to
Tbilisi after more than 100,000 people protested in front of Communist Party headquarters with banners calling for
Georgia to secede from the Soviet Union and for
Abkhazia to be fully integrated into Georgia. On
9 April 1989, troops attacked the demonstrators; some 20 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. This event radicalized Georgian politics, prompting many to conclude that independence was preferable to continued Soviet rule. Given the abuses by members of the armed forces and police, Moscow acted fast. On 14 April, Gorbachev removed
Jumber Patiashvili as
First Secretary of the Georgian Communist Party as a result of the killings and replaced him with former Georgian
KGB chief
Givi Gumbaridze. On 16 July 1989, in
Abkhazia's capital
Sukhumi, a protest against the opening of a Georgian university branch in the town led to violence that quickly degenerated into a large-scale inter-ethnic confrontation in which 18 died and hundreds were injured before Soviet troops restored order. This riot marked the start of the
Georgian-Abkhaz conflict. On 17 November 1989, the Supreme Council of Georgia held its fall plenary session, which lasted two days. One of the resolutions that came out of it was as a declaration against what it called an "illegal" accession into the Soviet Union of the country 68 years ago, forced against its will by the Red Army, the CPSU and the All-Russian Council of People's Commissars.
Western republics On 26 March 1989, elections to the Congress of People's Deputies, 15 of the 46 Moldovan deputies elected for congressional seats in Moscow were supporters of the Nationalist/Democratic movement. The
Popular Front of Moldova founding congress took place two months later, on 20 May. During its second congress (30 June – 1 July 1989),
Ion Hadârcă was elected its president. A series of demonstrations that became known as the
Grand National Assembly () was the Front's first major achievement. Such mass demonstrations, including one attended by 300,000 people on 27 August, convinced the Moldovan Supreme Soviet on 31 August to adopt the language law making
Romanian the official language, and replacing the
Cyrillic alphabet with
Latin characters. In Ukraine,
Lviv and
Kiev celebrated Ukrainian Independence Day on 22 January 1989. Thousands gathered in Lviv for an unauthorized
moleben (religious service) in front of
St. George's Cathedral. In Kiev, 60 activists met in a Kiev apartment to commemorate the proclamation of the
Ukrainian People's Republic in 1918. On 11–12 February 1989, the Ukrainian Language Society held its founding congress. On 15 February 1989, the formation of the Initiative Committee for the Renewal of the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was announced. The program and statutes of the movement were proposed by the
Writers' Union of Ukraine and were published in the journal
Literaturna Ukraina on 16 February 1989. The organization heralded Ukrainian dissidents such as
Vyacheslav Chornovil. In late February, large public rallies took place in Kiev to protest the election laws, on the eve of the 26 March elections to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies, and to call for the resignation of the first secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine,
Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, lampooned as "the mastodon of stagnation". The demonstrations coincided with a visit to Ukraine by
Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. On 26 February 1989, between 20,000 and 30,000 people participated in an unsanctioned ecumenical memorial service in Lviv, marking the anniversary of the death of 19th-century Ukrainian artist and nationalist
Taras Shevchenko. On 4 March 1989, the Memorial Society, committed to honoring the victims of Stalinism and cleansing society of Soviet practices, was founded in Kiev. A public rally was held the next day. On 12 March, a pre-election meeting organized in Lviv by the Ukrainian Helsinki Union and the
Marian Society Myloserdia (Compassion) was violently dispersed, and nearly 300 people were detained. On 26 March, elections were held to the Congress of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union;
by-elections were held on 9 April, 14 May, and 21 May. Among the 225 Ukrainian representatives to the Congress, most were conservatives, though a handful of progressives were also elected. From 20 to 23 April 1989, pre-election meetings were held in Lviv for four consecutive days, drawing crowds of up to 25,000. The action included a one-hour warning strike at eight local factories and institutions. It was the first labor strike in Lviv since 1944. On 3 May, a pre-election rally attracted 30,000 in Lviv. On 7 May, The Memorial Society organized a mass meeting at
Bykivnia, site of a mass grave of Ukrainian and Polish victims of Stalinist terror. After a march from Kiev to the site, a memorial service was staged. From mid-May to September 1989, Ukrainian Greek-Catholic hunger strikers staged protests on Moscow's
Arbat to call attention to the plight of their Church. They were especially active during the July session of the World Council of Churches held in Moscow. The protest ended with the arrests of the group on 18 September. On 27 May 1989, the founding conference of the Lviv regional Memorial Society was held. On 18 June 1989, an estimated 100,000 faithful participated in public religious services in
Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, responding to Cardinal
Myroslav Lubachivsky's call for an international day of prayer. On 19 August 1989, the Russian Orthodox Parish of Saints Peter and Paul announced it would be switching to the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church. On 2 September 1989, tens of thousands across Ukraine protested a draft election law that reserved special seats for the Communist Party and for other official organizations for parliamentary seats: 50,000 in Lviv, 40,000 in Kiev, 10,000 in
Zhytomyr, 5,000 each in
Dniprodzerzhynsk and
Chervonohrad, and 2,000 in
Kharkiv. From 8–10 September 1989, writer
Ivan Drach was elected to head Rukh, the
People's Movement of Ukraine, at its founding congress in Kiev. On 17 September, between 150,000 and 200,000 people marched in Lviv, demanding the legalization of the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. On 21 September 1989, exhumation of a mass grave began in Demianiv Laz, a nature preserve south of
Ivano-Frankivsk. On 28 September, the First Secretary of the
Communist Party of Ukraine Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, a holdover from the Brezhnev era, was replaced in this office by
Vladimir Ivashko. On 1 October 1989, a peaceful demonstration of 10,000 to 15,000 people was violently dispersed by police constables in front of Lviv's
Druzhba Stadium, where a concert celebrating the
Soviet "reunification" of Ukrainian lands was being held. On 10 October, Ivano-Frankivsk was the site of a pre-election protest attended by 30,000 people. On 15 October, several thousand people gathered in
Chervonohrad,
Chernivtsi,
Rivne, and
Zhytomyr; 500 in
Dnipropetrovsk; and 30,000 in Lviv to protest the election law. On 20 October, faithful and clergy of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church participated in a synod in Lviv, the first since its forced liquidation in the 1930s. On 24 October, the union Supreme Soviet passed a law eliminating special seats for Communist Party and other official organizations' representatives in parliament. On 26 October, twenty factories in Lviv held strikes and meetings to protest the police brutality of 1 October and the authorities' unwillingness to prosecute those responsible. From 26 to 28 October, the
Zelenyi Svit (Friends of the Earth – Ukraine) environmental association held its founding congress, and on 27 October the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law eliminating the special status of party and other official organizations as deputies of parliament. On 28 October 1989, the Ukrainian Parliament decreed that effective 1 January 1990, Ukrainian would be the official language of Ukraine, while Russian would be used for communication between ethnic groups. On the same day, The Congregation of the Church of the Transfiguration in Lviv left the Russian Orthodox Church and proclaimed itself the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The following day, thousands attended a memorial service at Demianiv Laz, and a temporary marker was placed to indicate that a monument to the "victims of the repressions of 1939–1941" soon would be erected. In mid-November, The Shevchenko Ukrainian Language Society was officially registered. On 19 November 1989, a public gathering in Kiev attracted thousands of mourners, friends, and family to the reburial in Ukraine of three inmates of the infamous
Gulag Camp No. 36 in Perm in the
Ural Mountains: human-rights activists
Vasyl Stus, Oleksiy Tykhy, and
Yuriy Lytvyn. Their remains were reinterred in
Baikove Cemetery. On 26 November 1989, a day of prayer and fasting was proclaimed by Cardinal Myroslav Lubachivsky, thousands of faithful in western Ukraine participated in religious services on the eve of a meeting between Pope
John Paul II and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU Gorbachev. On 28 November 1989, the Ukrainian SSR's Council for Religious Affairs issued a decree allowing Ukrainian Catholic congregations to register as legal organizations. The decree was proclaimed on December 1, coinciding with a meeting at the Vatican between the pope and the
Soviet general secretary. On 10 December 1989, the first officially sanctioned observance of International Human Rights Day was held in Lviv. On 17 December, an estimated 30,000 attended a public meeting organized in Kiev by Rukh in memory of Nobel laureate
Andrei Sakharov, who died on 14 December. On 26 December, the Supreme Soviet of Ukrainian SSR adopted a law designating
Christmas,
Easter, and the
Feast of the Holy Trinity official holidays. On 30 September 1989, thousands of Belarusians, denouncing local leaders, marched through Minsk to demand additional cleanup of the 1986
Chernobyl disaster site in Ukraine. Up to 15,000 protesters wearing armbands bearing radioactivity symbols and carrying the
banned red-and-white national flag used by the
government-in-exile filed through torrential rain in defiance of a ban by local authorities. Later, they gathered in the city center near the government's headquarters, where speakers demanded the resignation of Yefrem Sokolov, the republic's Communist Party leader, and called for the evacuation of half a million people from the contaminated zones.
Miners' strikes Strike actions by coal miners in the
Kuznetsk Basin, or Kuzbass, began on 10 or 11 July 1989, in reaction to increased prices, unsafe working conditions and popular frenzy against corruption as a result of
perestroika. Miners in the Kuzbass were soon joined by other miners in Ukraine's eastern
Donbas region and the northern city of
Vorkuta. Shcherbytsky, Ukraine's first secretary, came under significant political pressure as the strikes in the Donbas became particularly militant and connected themselves to Ukrainian dissident groups. The strikes came to an end from 24 to 27 July after the Soviet government agreed to codify the workers' demands into law, but by that point the damage had already been done. Following a 7 August meeting of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Shcherbytsky was forced to retire. The government's accession to the miners' demands failed to prevent the growth of public anger, particularly in Ukraine, where the miners had become especially militant. as the Ukrainian dissident movement continued to gain broader public support.
Central Asian republics Thousands of Soviet troops were sent to the
Fergana Valley, southeast of the Uzbek capital
Tashkent, to re-establish order after clashes in which local Uzbeks hunted down members of the
Meskhetian minority in several days of rioting between 4–11 June 1989 in what would be called the
Fergana massacre; about 100 people were killed. As a consequence, most of the Meskhetian community fled away from Uzbekistan. Uzbek outrage over the events soon reached the capital and soon Moscow acted fast. On 23 June 1989, Gorbachev removed
Rafiq Nishonov as First Secretary of the
Communist Party of the Uzbek SSR for being unable to stop the race riots in the region and replaced him with
Islam Karimov, who went on to lead Uzbekistan as a Soviet Republic and subsequently as an independent state until his death in 2016. In
Kazakhstan on 19 June 1989, young men carrying guns,
firebombs, iron bars, and stones rioted in
Zhanaozen, causing a number of deaths. The youths tried to seize a police station and a water-supply station. They brought public transportation to a halt and shut down various shops and industries. By 25 June, the rioting had spread to five other towns near the
Caspian Sea. A mob of about 150 people armed with sticks, stones and metal rods attacked the police station in Mangishlak, about from Zhanaozen before they were dispersed by government troops flown in by helicopters. Mobs of young people also rampaged through Yeraliev, Shepke,
Fort-Shevchenko and
Kulsary, where they poured flammable liquid on trains housing temporary workers and set them on fire. With the government and CPSU shocked by the riots, on 22 June 1989, as a result of the riots, Gorbachev removed
Gennady Kolbin (the ethnic Russian whose appointment caused riots in December 1986) as First Secretary of the
Communist Party of Kazakhstan for his poor handling of the June events and replaced him with
Nursultan Nazarbayev, an ethnic Kazakh who went on to lead Kazakhstan as the Soviet Republic and subsequently to independence. Nazarbayev would lead Kazakhstan for 27 years until he stepped down as president on 19 March 2019.
1990 Moscow loses five republics On 7 February 1990, the Central Committee of the CPSU accepted Gorbachev's recommendation that the party give up its
monopoly on political power. In 1990, all fifteen constituent republics of the USSR held their first competitive elections, with reformers and
ethnic nationalists winning many seats. The CPSU lost the elections in five republics: • In
Lithuania, to
Sąjūdis, on 24 February (run-off elections on 4, 7, 8 and 10 March) • In
Moldova, to the
Popular Front of Moldova, on 25 February • In
Estonia, to the
Popular Front of Estonia, on 18 March • In
Latvia, to the
Popular Front of Latvia, on 18 March (run-off elections on 25 March, 1 and 29 April) • In
Georgia, to
Round Table—Free Georgia, on 28 October (run-off election on 11 November) The constituent republics began to declare their fledgling states' sovereignty and began a "war of laws" with the Moscow central government; they rejected union-wide legislation that conflicted with local laws, asserted control over their local economies, and refused to pay taxes to the Soviet government. Landsbergis, Chairman of the Supreme Council of Lithuania, also exempted Lithuanian men from
mandatory service in the Soviet Armed Forces. This conflict caused economic dislocation as supply lines were disrupted, and caused the
Soviet economy to decline further.
Rivalry between Soviet Union and Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic On 4 March 1990, the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic held relatively free elections for the
Congress of People's Deputies of Russia.
Boris Yeltsin was elected, representing
Sverdlovsk, garnering 72 percent of the vote. On 29 May 1990, Yeltsin was elected chair of the
Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, despite the fact that Gorbachev asked Russian deputies not to vote for him. Yeltsin was supported by democratic and conservative members of the Supreme Soviet, who sought power in the developing political situation. A new power struggle emerged between the RSFSR and the
Soviet Union. On 12 June 1990, the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR adopted a
declaration of sovereignty. On 12 July 1990, Yeltsin resigned from the Communist Party in a dramatic speech at the
28th Congress.
Baltic republics Gorbachev's visit to the Lithuanian capital
Vilnius on 11–13 January 1990, provoked a pro-independence rally attended by an estimated 250,000 people. On 11 March, the newly elected parliament of the Lithuanian SSR elected
Vytautas Landsbergis, the leader of
Sąjūdis, as its chairman and proclaimed the
Act of the Re-Establishment of the State of Lithuania, making Lithuania the first Soviet Republic to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Moscow reacted with an economic blockade keeping the troops in Lithuania ostensibly "to secure the rights of
ethnic Russians". On 25 March 1990, the
Estonian Communist Party voted to split from the CPSU after a six-month transition. On 30 March 1990, the Estonian Supreme Council declared the
Soviet occupation of Estonia since the Second World War to be illegal and began a period of national transition towards the formal reestablishment of national independence within the republic. On 3 April 1990,
Edgar Savisaar of the
Popular Front of Estonia was elected chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Prime Minister), and soon a majority-pro independence cabinet was formed. Latvia
declared the restoration of independence on 4 May 1990, with the declaration stipulating a transitional period to complete independence. The Declaration stated that although Latvia had de facto lost its independence in World War II, the country had
de jure remained a sovereign country because the annexation had been unconstitutional and against the will of the Latvian people. The declaration also stated that Latvia would base its relationship with the Soviet Union on the basis of the
Latvian–Soviet Peace Treaty of 1920, in which the Soviet Union recognized Latvia's independence as inviolable "for all future time". 4 May is now a national holiday in Latvia. On 7 May 1990,
Ivars Godmanis of the
Latvian Popular Front was elected chairman of the Council of Ministers (the equivalent of being Latvia's Prime Minister), becoming the first premier of the restored Latvian republic. Оn 8 May 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR adopted a law officially declaring the reinstatement of the 1938 Constitution of the independent Republic of Estonia.
Caucasus During the first week of January 1990, in the Azerbaijani
exclave of
Nakhchivan, the Popular Front led crowds in the storming and destruction of the frontier fences and watchtowers along the border with
Iran, and thousands of Soviet Azerbaijanis crossed the border to meet their ethnic cousins in
Iranian Azerbaijan. protests and crackdown |alt=Azerbaijani stamp in black, blue, white, and red, displaying images of the Black January protests|290x290px Ethnic tensions had escalated between the Armenians and Azerbaijanis in spring and summer 1988. On 9 January 1990, after the Armenian parliament voted to include Nagorno-Karabakh within its budget, renewed fighting broke out, hostages were taken, and four Soviet soldiers were killed. On 11 January, Popular Front radicals stormed party buildings and effectively overthrew the communist powers in the southern town of
Lenkoran. Gorbachev resolved to regain control of Azerbaijan; the events that ensued are known as "
Black January". Late on 19 January 1990, after blowing up the central television station and cutting the phone and radio lines, 26,000 Soviet troops entered the Azerbaijani capital
Baku, smashing barricades, attacking protesters, and firing into crowds. On that night and during subsequent confrontations (which lasted until February), more than 130 people died. Most of these were civilians. More than 700 civilians were wounded, hundreds were detained, but only a few were actually tried for alleged criminal offenses. Civil liberties suffered. Soviet Defence Minister
Dmitry Yazov stated that the use of force in Baku was intended to prevent the
de facto takeover of the Azerbaijani government by the non-communist opposition, to prevent their victory in upcoming free elections (scheduled for March 1990), to destroy them as a political force, and to ensure that the Communist government remained in power. The army had gained control of Baku, but by 20 January it had essentially lost Azerbaijan. Nearly the entire population of Baku turned out for the mass funerals of "martyrs" buried in the Alley of Martyrs. Thousands of Communist Party members publicly burned their party cards. First Secretary Vezirov decamped to Moscow and
Ayaz Mutalibov was appointed his successor in a free vote of party officials. The ethnic Russian
Viktor Polyanichko remained second secretary. In reaction to the Soviet actions in Baku,
Sakina Aliyeva, Chair of the
Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the
Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic called a
special session where it was debated whether or not Nakhchivan could
secede from the USSR under Article 81 of the Soviet Constitution. Deciding that it was legal, deputies prepared a declaration of independence, which Aliyeva signed and presented on 20 January on national television. It was the first declaration of secession by a recognized region in the USSR. Aliyeva and the Nakhchivan Soviet's actions were denounced by government officials who forced her to resign and the attempt at independence was aborted. Following the hardliners' takeover, the 30 September 1990 elections (runoffs on 14 October) were characterized by intimidation; several Popular Front candidates were jailed, two were murdered, and unabashed
ballot stuffing took place, even in the presence of Western observers. The election results reflected the threatening environment; out of the 350 members, 280 were Communists, with only 45 opposition candidates from the Popular Front and other non-communist groups, who together formed a Democratic Bloc ("Dembloc"). In May 1990 Mutalibov was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet unopposed. On 23 August 1990, the
Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR adopted the
Declaration of Independence of Armenia. The document proclaimed the independent Republic of Armenia with its own symbols, army, financial institutions, foreign and tax policy.
Western republics On 21 January 1990,
Rukh organized a human chain between Kiev, Lviv, and Ivano-Frankivsk. Hundreds of thousands joined hands to commemorate the proclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1918 and the reunification of Ukrainian lands one year later (
1919 Unification Act). On 23 January 1990, the
Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church held its first
synod since its liquidation by the Soviets in 1946 (an act which the gathering declared invalid). On 9 February 1990, the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice officially registered Rukh. However, the registration came too late for Rukh to field its own candidates for the parliamentary and local elections on 4 March. At those
1990 elections of
people's deputies to the
Supreme Council (
Verkhovna Rada), candidates from the
Democratic Bloc won landslide victories in
western Ukrainian oblasts. A majority of the seats had to hold run-off elections. On 18 March, Democratic candidates scored further victories in the run-offs. The Democratic Bloc gained about 90 out of 450 seats in the new parliament. On 6 April 1990, the
Lviv City Council voted to return
St. George Cathedral to the
Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The
Russian Orthodox Church refused to yield. On 29–30 April 1990, the
Ukrainian Helsinki Union disbanded to form the
Ukrainian Republican Party. On 15 May the new parliament convened. The bloc of conservative communists held 239 seats; the Democratic Bloc, which had evolved into the National Council, had 125 deputies. On 4 June 1990, two candidates remained in the protracted race for parliament chair. The leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU),
Volodymyr Ivashko, was elected with 60 percent of the vote as more than 100 opposition deputies boycotted the election. On 5–6 June 1990, Metropolitan
Mstyslav of the U.S.-based
Ukrainian Orthodox Church was elected patriarch of the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC) during that Church's first synod. The UAOC declared its full independence from the
Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, which in March had granted autonomy to the Ukrainian Orthodox church headed by the Metropolitan
Filaret. became Ukraine's leader in 1990. On 22 June 1990,
Volodymyr Ivashko withdrew his candidacy for leader of the Communist Party of Ukraine in view of his new position in parliament.
Stanislav Hurenko was elected first secretary of the CPU. On 11 July, Ivashko resigned from his post as chairman of the
Ukrainian Parliament after he was elected deputy general secretary of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Parliament accepted the resignation a week later, on 18 July. On 16 July Parliament overwhelmingly approved the Declaration on State Sovereignty of Ukraine – with a vote of 355 in favour and four against. The people's deputies voted 339 to 5 to proclaim 16 July a Ukrainian national holiday. On 23 July 1990,
Leonid Kravchuk was elected to replace Ivashko as parliament chairman. On 30 July, Parliament adopted a resolution on military service ordering Ukrainian soldiers "in regions of national conflict such as Armenia and Azerbaijan" to return to Ukrainian territory. On August 1, Parliament voted overwhelmingly to shut down the
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. On 3 August, it adopted a law on the economic sovereignty of the Ukrainian republic. On 19 August, the first Ukrainian Catholic liturgy in 44 years was celebrated at St. George Cathedral. On 5–7 September, the International Symposium on the
Great Famine of 1932–1933 was held in Kiev. On 8 September, The first "Youth for Christ" rally since 1933 took place held in Lviv, with 40,000 participants. In 28–30 September, the
Green Party of Ukraine held its founding congress. On 30 September, nearly 100,000 people marched in Kiev to protest against the new union treaty proposed by Gorbachev. On 1 October 1990, parliament reconvened amid mass protests calling for the resignations of Kravchuk and of Prime Minister
Vitaliy Masol, a leftover from the previous regime. Students erected a tent city on
October Revolution Square, where they continued the protest. On 17 October Masol resigned, and on 20 October,
Patriarch Mstyslav I of Kiev and all Ukraine arrived at
Saint Sophia's Cathedral, ending a 46-year banishment from his homeland. On 23 October 1990, Parliament voted to delete Article 6 of the Ukrainian Constitution, which referred to the "leading role" of the Communist Party. On 25–28 October 1990, Rukh held its second congress and declared that its principal goal was the "renewal of independent statehood for Ukraine". On 28 October UAOC faithful, supported by Ukrainian Catholics, demonstrated near St. Sophia's Cathedral as newly elected Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Aleksei and Metropolitan Filaret celebrated liturgy at the shrine. On 1 November, the leaders of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, respectively, Metropolitan Volodymyr Sterniuk and Patriarch Mstyslav, met in Lviv during anniversary commemorations of the 1918 proclamation of the
Western Ukrainian National Republic. On 18 November 1990, the
Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church enthroned Mstyslav as Patriarch of Kiev and all Ukraine during ceremonies at Saint Sophia's Cathedral. Also on 18 November,
Canada announced that its consul-general to Kiev would be Ukrainian-Canadian Nestor Gayowsky. On 19 November, the United States announced that its consul to Kiev would be Ukrainian-American John Stepanchuk. On 19 November, the chairmen of the Ukrainian and Russian parliaments, respectively, Kravchuk and Yeltsin, signed a 10-year bilateral pact. In early December 1990 the Party of Democratic Rebirth of Ukraine was founded; on 15 December, the
Democratic Party of Ukraine was founded. On 27 July 1990 the
Supreme Soviet of the Byelorussian SSR passed a
Declaration of State Sovereignty, asserting its sovereignty as a republic inside the Soviet Union.
Central Asian republics during the
1990 Dushanbe riots. |alt=Fighting between protestors and the Soviet Army during the Dushanbe riots On 12–14 February 1990, anti-government riots took place in
Tajikistan's capital,
Dushanbe, as tensions rose between nationalist
Tajiks and ethnic
Armenian refugees, after the
Sumgait pogrom and anti-Armenian riots in Azerbaijan in 1988. A state of emergency was declared in the capital on 12 February following disturbances caused by demonstrators at the republican party headquarters demanding that the refugees leave Tajikistan. Demonstrations sponsored by the nationalist
Rastokhez movement turned violent. Radical economic and political reforms were demanded by the protesters, who torched government buildings; shops and other businesses were attacked and looted. During these riots 26 people were killed and 565 injured. In June 1990, the city of
Osh and its environs experienced bloody
ethnic clashes between ethnic
Kirghiz nationalist group Osh Aymaghi and
Uzbek nationalist group Adolat over the land of a former
collective farm. There were about 1,200 casualties, including over 300 dead and 462 seriously injured. The riots broke out over the division of land resources in and around the city. , last head of the
Turkmen SSR, and first
president of Turkmenistan In
Turkmen SSR, the
national conservative People's Democratic Movement became a supporter of independence, uniting the Turkmen
intelligentsia with moderate and radical
Turkmen nationalists. They did not have a pronounced and eminent leader. Since 1989, small rallies have been held in
Ashghabad and
Krasnovodsk for the independence of Turkmenistan, as well as for the assignment of the status of the "state language" to the
Turkmen language in the republic. The rallies also demanded that the republican leadership leave most of the oil revenues in the republic itself, and
"not feed Moscow". Turkmen oppositionists and dissidents actively cooperated with opposition from
Uzbekistan,
Azerbaijan and
Georgia. The leadership of Soviet Turkmenistan, led by
Saparmurat Niyazov, opposed independence, suppressing Turkmen dissidents and oppositionists, but following the
elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Turkmen SSR in January 1990, several dissidents were able to be elected to the republican parliament as independent candidates, who, together with their supporters, managed to actively participate in political life and express their opinions. The role of the
Communist Party of Turkmenistan was very strong in this republic, especially in the west and south, where the Russian-speaking population lived. Over 90% of the seats in the republican parliament were held by communists. Despite all of the above, during the dissolution of the USSR, there were practically no high-profile events in Turkmenistan, and the Turkmen SSR was considered by the
CPSU to be one of the "most exemplary and loyal republics" of the Soviet Union to Moscow.
1991 in 1991,
South Ossetia (orange) and
Abkhazia (purple) declared their desire to leave
Georgia and remain part of the
Soviet Union/
Russia.|alt=Map of the disputes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia within Georgia
Moscow's crisis On 14 January 1991,
Nikolai Ryzhkov resigned from his post as
Chairman of the
Council of Ministers, or premier of the Soviet Union, and was succeeded by
Valentin Pavlov in the newly established post of Prime Minister of the Soviet Union. On 17 March 1991, in a
Union-wide referendum 77.85% percent of voters endorsed retention of a reformed Soviet Union. The Baltic republics,
Armenia,
Georgia, and
Moldova boycotted the referendum as well as
Checheno-Ingushetia (an
autonomous republic within Russia that had a strong desire for independence, and by now referred to itself as Ichkeria). In each of the other nine republics, a majority of the voters supported the retention of a reformed Soviet Union, the same in the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia who also voted for the continuation of the state.
Russia's President Boris Yeltsin , Russia's first democratically elected president On 12 June 1991,
Boris Yeltsin was elected President of the
Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic with 57 percent of the popular vote in
the country's first Presidential election, defeating Gorbachev's preferred candidate,
Nikolai Ryzhkov, who won 16 percent of the vote. Following Yeltsin's election as president, the RSFSR declared itself autonomous from the Soviet Union. In his election campaign, Yeltsin criticized the "dictatorship of the center", but did not yet suggest that he would introduce a
market economy.
The Caucasus: Georgia takes the lead In response to the USSR-wide referendum, on 31 March 1991, an
independence referendum was held on the matter of Georgian independence. Boycotted by the South Ossetian and Abkhaz minorities, who showed up in the all-Union plebiscite earlier that month, a record 99.5% of Georgian voters voted for the restoration of Georgian independence as against 0.5% against. Voter turnout was 90.6%. On 9 April 1991, two years after the massacres in Tbilisi and a year and two months after Lithuania's declaration of restored independence, the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR in plenary session declared the formal reconstitution of Georgia's independence from the Soviet Union, 70 years after the Soviet Armed Forces overthrew the Democratic Republic. This landmark declaration of independence by Georgia made it the first of the Caucasian republics to officially secede from the Soviet Union and the 3rd republic overall so far.
Baltic republics On 13 January 1991, Soviet troops, along with the
KGB Spetsnaz Alpha Group,
stormed the Vilnius TV Tower in Lithuania to suppress the independence movement. Fourteen unarmed civilians were killed and hundreds more injured. On the night of 31 July, Russian
OMON from
Riga, the Soviet military headquarters in the Baltics,
assaulted the Lithuanian border post in
Medininkai, and killed seven Lithuanian servicemen. This event further weakened the Soviet Union's position internationally and domestically, and stiffened Lithuanian resistance. to prevent the Soviet Army from reaching the Latvian
Saeima, July 1991 The bloody attacks in Lithuania prompted Latvians to organize defensive barricades (the events are still today known as "
The Barricades") blocking access to strategically important buildings and bridges in Riga. Soviet attacks in the ensuing days resulted in six deaths and several injuries; one person died later of their wounds. Оn 9 February, Lithuania held
an independence referendum with 93.2% voting in favor of independence. On 12 February, the independence of Lithuania was recognized by Iceland. On 3 March,
a referendum was held on the independence of the Republic of Estonia, which was attended by those who lived in Estonia before the Soviet annexation and their descendants, as well as persons who have received the so-called "green cards" of the Congress of Estonia. 77.8% of those who voted supported the idea of restoring independence. On 11 March, Denmark recognized Estonia's independence. When Estonia reaffirmed its independence during the coup (see below) in the dark hours of 20 August 1991, at 11:03 pm Tallinn time, many Estonian volunteers surrounded the
Tallinn TV Tower in an attempt to prepare to cut off the communication channels after the Soviet troops seized it and refused to be intimidated by the Soviet troops. When
Edgar Savisaar confronted the Soviet troops for ten minutes, they finally retreated from the TV tower after a failed resistance against the Estonians.
August coup attempt Faced with growing
separatism, Gorbachev sought to restructure the Soviet Union into a less centralized state. On 20 August, the Russian SFSR was scheduled to sign a
New Union Treaty that would have converted the Soviet Union into a federation of independent republics with a common president, foreign policy and military. It was strongly supported by the Central Asian republics, which needed the economic advantages of a common market to prosper. However, it would have meant some degree of continued Communist Party control over economic and social life. More radical reformists were increasingly convinced that a rapid transition to a market economy was required, even if the eventual outcome meant the disintegration of the Soviet Union into several independent states. Independence also accorded with Yeltsin's desires as president of the RSFSR, as well as those of regional and local authorities to get rid of Moscow's pervasive control. In contrast to the reformers' lukewarm response to the treaty, the conservatives, "patriots", and Russian nationalists of the USSR – still strong within the CPSU and the military – were opposed to weakening the Soviet state and its centralized power structure. On 19 August 1991, Gorbachev's vice president,
Gennady Yanayev, Prime Minister
Valentin Pavlov, Defense Minister
Dmitry Yazov, KGB chief
Vladimir Kryuchkov and other senior officials acted to prevent the union treaty from being signed by forming the "General Committee on the State Emergency", which put Gorbachev – on holiday in
Foros, Crimea – under house arrest and cut off his communications. The coup leaders issued an emergency decree suspending political activity and banning most newspapers. Thousands of Muscovites came out to defend the
White House (the Russian Federation's parliament and Yeltsin's office), the symbolic seat of Russian sovereignty at the time. The organizers of the coup tried but ultimately failed to arrest Yeltsin, who rallied opposition to the coup by making speeches from atop a tank. The special forces dispatched by the coup leaders took up positions near the White House, but members refused to storm the barricaded building. The coup leaders also neglected to jam foreign news broadcasts, so many Muscovites watched it unfold live on
CNN. Even the isolated Gorbachev was able to stay abreast of developments by tuning into the BBC World Service on a small transistor radio. After three days, on 21 August 1991, the coup collapsed. The organizers were detained and Gorbachev was reinstated as president, albeit with his power much depleted.
August-December transition period to establish the
Commonwealth of Independent States, 8 December 1991|225x225px On 24 August 1991, Gorbachev resigned as general secretary of the CPSU and dissolved all party units in the government. On the same day, the
Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR passed a
Declaration of Independence of Ukraine, calling for a national referendum on the independence of Ukraine from the Soviet Union. Five days later, the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union indefinitely suspended all CPSU activity on Soviet territory, effectively ending Communist rule in the Soviet Union and dissolving the only remaining unifying force in the country. Gorbachev established a
State Council of the Soviet Union on 5 September, designed to bring him and the highest officials of the remaining republics into a collective leadership. The State Council was also empowered to appoint a
premier of the Soviet Union. The premiership never functioned properly, though
Ivan Silayev de facto took the post through the
Committee on the Operational Management of the Soviet Economy and the
Inter-Republican Economic Committee and tried to form
a government, though with rapidly shrinking powers. The Soviet Union collapsed with dramatic speed in the last quarter of 1991. Between August and December, 10 republics seceded from the union, largely out of fear of another coup. By the end of September, Gorbachev no longer had the ability to influence events outside of Moscow. He was challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had begun taking over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Kremlin. The Soviet Union recognized the independence of Baltic republics on 6 September 1991. Georgia cut all ties with the Soviet Union on 7 September, citing the failure to receive a "sufficiently grounded answer" why the USSR did not recognise its independence when it had recognised the Baltic States' secession. On 17 September 1991,
General Assembly resolution numbers 46/4, 46/5, and 46/6 admitted Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to the
United Nations, conforming to
Security Council resolution numbers
709,
710, and
711 passed on 12 September without a vote. On 6 November, Yeltsin – who had by then taken over much of the Soviet government – issued a decree banning all Communist Party activities on Russian territory. By 7 November 1991, most newspapers referred to the 'former Soviet Union'. and the СССР letters (top) in the façade of the
Grand Kremlin Palace were replaced by five double-headed
Russian eagles (bottom) after the dissolution of the
Soviet Union, the eagles having been removed by the Bolsheviks after the revolution. The final round of the Soviet Union's collapse began on 1 December 1991. That day, a
Ukrainian popular referendum resulted in 91 percent of Ukraine's voters voting to affirm the independence declaration passed in August and formally secede from the Union. The secession of Ukraine, long second only to Russia in economic and political power, ended any realistic chance of Gorbachev keeping the Soviet Union together even on a limited scale. The leaders of the three Slavic republics, Russia, Ukraine, and
Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), agreed to discuss possible alternatives to the union. On 8 December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus secretly met in
Belavezhskaya Pushcha, in western Belarus, and signed the
Belavezha Accords, which proclaimed the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and announced formation of the
Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as a looser association to take its place. They also invited other republics to join the CIS. Gorbachev called it an unconstitutional coup. However, by this time there was no longer any reasonable doubt that, as the preamble of the Accords put it, the Soviet Union no longer existed "as a subject of
international law and a geopolitical reality". On 10 December, the agreement was ratified by the
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the
Supreme Council of Belarus. On 12 December, the
Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR formally ratified the Belavezha Accords, denounced the
1922 Union Treaty, and recalled the Russian deputies from the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. The legality of this ratification raised doubts among some members of the Russian parliament, since according to the 1978 RSFSR Constitution consideration of this document was in the exclusive jurisdiction of the Congress of People's Deputies of the RSFSR. Additionally, the Soviet Constitution did not allow a republic to unilaterally recall its deputies. However, no one in either Russia or the Kremlin objected. Any objections from the latter would have likely had no effect, since what was left of the Soviet government had effectively been rendered impotent long before December. A number of lawyers believe that the denunciation of the union treaty was meaningless since it became invalid in 1924 with the adoption of the
first constitution of the USSR (in 1996 the
State Duma had voiced the same position). Later that day, Gorbachev hinted for the first time that he was considering stepping down. On the surface, it appeared that the largest republic had formally seceded. However, this is not the case. Rather, Russia apparently took the line that it did not need to follow the secession process delineated in the Soviet Constitution because it was not possible to secede from a country that no longer existed. On 16 December 1991, the
Kazakh SSR became the last republic to formally secede from the Soviet Union, causing the Soviet Union to neither control any territory nor claim to control any territory (although Soviet embassies still existed). On 17 December 1991, along with 28 European countries, the
European Economic Community, and four non-European countries, the three Baltic Republics and nine of the twelve remaining Soviet republics signed the
European Energy Charter in
the Hague as sovereign states. On the same day, members of the lower house of the union parliament (Council of the Union) held a meeting of People's Deputies of the Soviet Union. The meeting adopted a statement in connection with the signing of the
Belovezha Accords and its ratification by the parliaments of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, in which it noted that it considers the decisions made on the liquidation of state power and administration bodies illegal and not meeting the current situation and the vital interests of the peoples and stated that in the event further complication of the situation in the country reserves the right to convene in the future the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR. . On 18 December, the upper chamber of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (Council of Republics) adopted a statement accepting the Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States and considering it to provide a way out of the acute political and economic crisis. Gorbachev met with Yeltsin and accepted the
fait accompli of the Soviet Union's dissolution. On the same day as the
Alma-Ata Protocol was signed, aimed to dissolve the Soviet Union and formally establish the
Commonwealth of Independent States, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR adopted a statute to change Russia's legal name from "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic" to "Russian Federation", showing that it was now a fully sovereign non-communist state. Doubts remained over whether the Belavezha Accords had legally dissolved the Soviet Union, since they were signed by only three republics. However, on 21 December, representatives of 11 of the 12 remaining republics – all except
Georgia – signed the
Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union and formally established the CIS. They also "accepted" Gorbachev's resignation. The command of the Armed Forces of the USSR was entrusted to the Minister of Defense Yevgeny Shaposhnikov. Even at this moment, Gorbachev had not made any formal plans to leave the scene yet. However, with a majority of republics now agreeing that the Soviet Union no longer existed, Gorbachev bowed to the inevitable, telling CBS News that he would resign as soon as he saw that the CIS was indeed a reality. in its ultimate session, voting the USSR out of existence, 26 December 1991. (Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) on the future status of Russia and other former Soviet Republics was published on 23 December 1991, according to which "The
European Community and its Member States have noted with satisfaction the decision of the participants at the
Alma Ata meeting on 21 December 1991 to establish a
Commonwealth of Independent States. They note that the international rights and obligations of the former USSR, including those arising from the
Charter of the United Nations, will continue to be exercised by Russia. They note with satisfaction the acceptance by the
Russian Government of these commitments and responsibilities and will continue to deal with Russia on this basis, taking into account the change in its constitutional status. They are prepared to recognise the other Republics constituting the Community as soon as they receive assurances from those Republics that they are prepared to fulfil the requirements set out in the "
Guidelines on the Recognition of New States in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union", adopted by Ministers on 16 December 1991. They expect, in particular, that those Republics will give them assurances that they will fulfil their international obligations arising from treaties and agreements concluded by the Soviet Union, including the ratification and implementation of the
CFE Treaty by the Republics to which it applies, and that they will establish a single control over nuclear weapons and their non-proliferation." In a nationally televised speech in the evening of 25 December, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union – or, as he put it, "I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." He declared the office extinct, and ceded all of its powers (such as control of the nuclear arsenal) to Yeltsin. On the night of 25 December, at 7:35 p.m. Moscow time, after Gorbachev appeared on television, the
Soviet flag was lowered and the
Russian tricolor raised in its place at 7:45 pm, symbolically marking the end of the Soviet Union. In his parting words, Gorbachev defended his record on domestic reform and
détente, but conceded, "The old system collapsed before a new one had time to start working." On that same day, the
president of the United States George H. W. Bush held a brief televised speech officially recognizing the independence of the 11 remaining republics. Gorbachev's speech, as well as the replacement of the Soviet flag with the Russian flag, symbolically marked the end of the Soviet Union. However, the final legal step in the Soviet Union's demise came on 26 December, when the
Soviet of Nationalities, the upper chamber of the
Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, ratified the Belavezha Accords, effectively voting the Soviet Union out of existence (the lower chamber, the
Soviet of the Union, had been unable to work since 12 December, when the recall of the Russian deputies left it without a
quorum). though the Russian authorities had taken over the suite two days earlier. The
Soviet Armed Forces were placed under the command of the
Commonwealth of Independent States, but were eventually subsumed by the newly independent republics, with the bulk becoming the
Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. By the end of 1991, the few remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased operation, and individual republics assumed the central government's role. Other issues were also addressed at Alma-Ata on 21 December 1991, including UN membership. In a document additional to the main Alma-Ata Declaration, Russia was authorized to assume the Soviet Union's UN membership, including its permanent seat on the
Security Council. The Soviet ambassador to the UN delivered a letter signed by Russian president Yeltsin to the
UN Secretary-General dated 24 December 1991, informing him that "with the support of the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States", Russia was the successor state to the USSR. After being circulated among the other UN member states, Russia attended the UN Security Council meeting on the last day of the year, 31 December 1991, with no objection raised. But questions of
state succession, settlement of external debt, and division of assets abroad
remain disputed between Russia and Ukraine to this day. In April 1992, the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia refused to ratify the Belovezhskaya Agreements and to exclude references to the Constitution and laws of the USSR from the text of the Constitution of the RSFSR. According to some Russian politicians, this was one of the reasons for the
political crisis of September – October 1993. In a
referendum on 12 December 1993, a
new Russian constitution was adopted, in which there was no mention of the union state. == Consequences ==