Turkmenistan declares independence after a referendum

Moldova’s parliament declared independence after the failed coup in Moscow. The decision followed language and sovereignty mobilization and amid conflict over the future of the Soviet Union and...

The Supreme Council of Azerbaijan declared restoration of state independence. The decision came amid the collapse of Union authority and the escalating Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which placed Armenian...

The republic’s legislature declared independence as Soviet institutions rapidly lost authority. The new state faced the task of building institutions amid economic disruption and a multiethnic...

Tajikistan’s Supreme Soviet adopted a declaration of independence. The republic became sovereign amid economic crisis and political tensions that would soon develop into civil conflict.

Voters overwhelmingly supported independence from the USSR. The referendum expressed popular will during a period of conflict and displacement linked to Nagorno-Karabakh.

A majority in every region supported the August Act of Independence. The result gave Ukraine’s independence democratic legitimacy and made a renewed Union increasingly untenable.

The leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine signed an agreement creating the Commonwealth of Independent States and stating that the USSR had ceased to exist. The decision was taken by republican...

Leaders of eleven former Soviet republics endorsed the CIS and principles of sovereign equality. The meeting broadened the post-Union arrangement, while Georgia and the Baltic republics remained...

The Council of Republics of the Supreme Soviet adopted a declaration recognizing that the USSR had ceased to exist. The formal end followed decades of union rule, republican mobilization, and a...