Belavezha Agreement declares the USSR has ceased to exist

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 referendum on independence was followed by a declaration establishing Turkmenistan as a sovereign state. The process transferred formal authority to the republic while leaving major economic and...

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.

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...