Belavezha Accords - Legal Basis and Ratification

Legal Basis and Ratification

While doubts remained over the authority of the leaders (Stanislav Shushkevich, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk) of three of the fifteen soviet republics to dissolve the Union, according to Article 72 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, Soviet republics had the right to secede freely from the Union. On December 12, 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR ratified the accords on behalf of Russia and at the same time denounced the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the Soviet Union, effectively seceeding from the USSR.

These attempts to dissolve the Soviet Union were seen as illegal by the Soviet Federal Government. Gorbachev himself described the moves thus:

...The fate of the multinational state cannot be determined by the will of the leaders of three republics. The question should be decided only by constitutional means with the participation of all sovereign states and taking into account the will of all their citizens. The statement that Unionwide legal norms would cease to be in effect is also illegal and dangerous; it can only worsen the chaos and anarchy in society. The hastiness with which the document appeared is also of serious concern. It was not discussed by the populations nor by the Supreme Soviets of the republics in whose name it was signed. Even worse, it appeared at the moment when the draft treaty for a Union of Sovereign States, drafted by the USSR State Council, was being discussed by the parliaments of the republics.

All doubts relating to the legal dissolution of the Soviet Union were removed on December 21, 1991, when the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia and the three Baltic states, including those republics that had signed the Belavezha Accords, signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the dismemberment and consequential extinction of the Soviet Union and restated the establishment of the CIS. Given that fourteen out of fifteen republics now exercised the constitutional right of secession and agreed with the extinction of the Union, the plurality of member-republics required for the Union's continued existence as a federal State ceased to be in place. The summit of Alma-Ata also agreed on several other practical measures consequential to the extinction of the Union.

However, for four more days a Soviet Federal Government continued to exist, and Mikhail Gorbachev continued to hold control over the Kremlin as President of the Soviet Union. This ended in the early hours of December 25, 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the President of the Soviet Union and turned control of the Kremlin and the remaining powers of his office over to the office of the president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, thus accepting termination of the Soviet Federal Government and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev's televised resignation speech and the subsequent lowering of the flag of the Soviet Union and hoisting of the flag of Russia on the flagpole in front of the Kremlin was broadcast around the world. On this day, President of the United States George H.W. Bush, a former head of the CIA, gave a short speech on national TV in the United States to commemorate the ending of the Cold War and to recognize the independence of the former states of the Soviet Union.

Also on December 25, 1991, the Russian SFSR, now no longer a sub-national entity of the Soviet Union but a sovereign Nation State, adopted a law renaming itself Russian Federation.

The following day, December 26, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, formally the highest governmental body of the Soviet Union, recognized the collapse of the Union and dissolved itself, an event that marked the final step in the extinction of the Soviet Union.

The Summit of Alma-Ata also issued a statement on December 21, 1991 supporting Russia's claim to be recognized as the successor state of the Soviet Union for the purposes of membership of the United Nations. On December 25, 1991, Russian President Yeltsin informed the UN Secretary General that the Soviet Union had been dissolved and that Russia would, as its successor State, continue the Soviet Union's membership in the United Nations. The document confirmed the credentials of the representatives of the Soviet Union as representatives of Russia, and requested that the name "Soviet Union" be changed to "Russian Federation" in all records and entries. This was a move designed to allow Russia to retain the Soviet Union's Security Council seat, which wouldn't have been possible if all States resulting from the breakup of the Union were regarded equal successors of the Soviet Union, or if it was regarded as having no successor State for the purpose of continuing the same UN membership. (see Russia and the United Nations). The Secretary General circulated the request, and there being no objection from any Member State, the Russian Federation took the Soviet Union's UN seat. On January 31, 1992, Russian Federation President Yeltsin personally took part in a Security Council meeting as representative of Russia, the first Security Council meeting in which Russia, as successor State, occupied the permanent Security Council seat assigned by the UN Charter to the Soviet Union.