The Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (officially), or unofficially the Minsk Agreement and best known as the Belovezha Accords, is the agreement declaring that the Soviet Union (USSR) had effectively ceased to exist and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place as an organization created by the same Union Republics. The documentation was signed at the state dacha near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus on 8 December 1991, by leaders of three of the four republics (except for the defunct Transcaucasian SFSR) which had signed the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the USSR:
As Shushkevich said in 2006, by December "the union had already been broken up by the putschists" who in August 1991 tried to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power to prevent the transformation of the Soviet Union into what Shushkevich described as "a confederation". The three wanted to avoid what happened in the breakup of Yugoslavia and "there was no other way out of the situation than a divorce."
The Protocol to the Agreement on the Creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States dated 21 December 1991 was signed on 21 December 1991.
On 31 March 1994, the CIS Economic Court decided that the 1991 agreements are primary in relation to the CIS Charter, and the CIS charter itself does not change the conditions of those 11 countries that have become co-founders of the CIS after they ratified the 1991 agreements. It is the agreements of 1991 that are the constituent and founding documents of the Commonwealth, but the Charter is not.
Name
The name is variously translated as Belavezh Accords, Belovezh Accords, Belovezha Accords, Belavezha Agreement, the Belovezhskaya Accord, the Belaya Vezha Accord, etc. A reason of the discrepancy is the difference between Russian and Belarusian names of the eponymous forest on the Belarus–Poland border that used to have General Secretary Brezhnev's hunting lodge.
Background
In the 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost (openness) and Perestroika (restructuring) aimed to revitalize the Soviet system but instead accelerated its unraveling. Nationalist, democratic and liberal movements gained momentum across the Soviet republics, and the control of the Communist Party weakened.
In the Soviet Union, a Union Republic was a constituent federated political entity with a system of government called a Soviet republic, which was officially defined in the 1977 constitution as "a sovereign Soviet socialist state which has united with the other Soviet republics to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" and whose sovereignty is limited by membership in the Union. As a result of its status as a sovereign state, the Union Republic de jure had the right to enter into relations with foreign states, conclude treaties with them and exchange diplomatic and consular representatives and participate in the activities of international organizations (including membership in international organizations). In the process of perestroika, it was once again confirmed that de jure all Union republics have, constitutionally and in practice, the right to freely withdraw from the Soviet Union and even without the consent of the central government, but this process must be orderly. In particular, the consent of the Soviet Union as a permanent member of the UN Security Council was required to become a new member of the UN. Self-determination is a cardinal principle in modern international law but no right to secession is recognized under international law.
Transition period
In order to reform the Soviet Union, the New Union Treaty and the draft European-Asian Union, among others, were proposed.
On 5 September 1991 the Law of the USSR "On the bodies of state power and administration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in the transition period" was signed.
On 24 September, RSFSR State Secretary Gennady Burbulis arrived to Boris Yeltsin, who was on vacation at the Black Sea coast. He brought a document "Russia's Strategy for the Transition Period", which later received the unofficial name "Burbulis Memorandum". The "memorandum" contained an analysis of the situation in the country, proposals on what should be done without delay, prepared by Yegor Gaidar's group. The document concluded that Russia should take the course of economic independence with a "soft", "temporary" political alliance with other republics, i.e. to create not a declared, but a truly independent state of Russia. 30 years later, Burbulis recalled that the Burbulis Memorandum was the reform concept of Gaidar's group: There was not any secrecy. First Yegor Gaidar made a report at the State Council of the RSFSR, and then Burbulis spoke at the State Council and said he would make a report for Yeltsin.
As the Kommersant newspaper wrote on 7 October 1991, a series of conflicts occurred in the RSFSR government during preparations for the signing of the Treaty on the Economic Community. In his speech to members of the Russian parliament, RSFSR State Secretary Gennady Burbulis declared Russia's special role as the legal successor to the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the ways of drafting agreements with the republics should be determined by the Russian leadership. Instead of the planned order, he suggested signing a political agreement first, followed by an economic one. The newspaper suggested that Burbulis' goal was to persuade Yeltsin not to sign the agreement as it stands at the time. Yegor Gaidar, Alexander Shokhin and Konstantin Kagalovsky were named as the developers of the statement made by Burbulis. In the same time, a group of "isolationist patriots" consisting of Mikhail Maley, Nikolai Fedorov, Alexander Shokhin, Igor Lazarev and Mikhail Poltoranin criticized Ivan Silaev and Yevgeny Saburov for wanting to preserve the Soviet Union.
This economic agreement was then to be supplemented by a similar political agreement. On 14 November in Novo-Ogaryovo, Mikhail Gorbachev and the heads of the seven union republics pre-agreed to sign a treaty on the creation of a political union called the Union of Sovereign States, which would have no constitution but would remain a subject of international law as the Soviet Union had been. The Treaty would complement the previous economic treaty and was scheduled to be signed in December.
On 30 November, Boris Yeltsin told George H. W. Bush "Right now the draft union treaty has only seven states ready to sign up - five Islamic and two Slavic (Belarus and Russia). That concerns me a great deal. ... We cannot have a situation where Russia and Belarus have two votes as Slavic states against five for the Islamic nations. ...I told Gorbachev that I can't imagine a union without Ukraine. ... We cannot lose ties between Russia and Ukraine. I am now thinking very hard with a very narrow circle of key advisors on how to preserve the Union, but also how not to lose relations with Ukraine. Our relations with Ukraine are more significant than those with Asian republics, which we feed all the time." The referendum in Ukraine was scheduled for 1 December.
Legal basis
Although the USSR Supreme Soviet passed on 3 April 1990 a law specifying the process for a union republic to leave the union, this law was not used to legally dissolve the USSR. Instead, the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics combined with the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties were used to formally dissolve the Soviet Union. This route provided an option for the original signatories of Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to bypass the involvement of the other Soviet Republics. Only three out of four original signatories of the Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were present, because the fourth (Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic) was dissolved in 1936.
According to the CIS Executive Committee website, "within the CIS, the conclusion of international treaties, their entry into force, application, interpretation, amendment, withdrawal from treaties, termination and suspension as well as the procedure for formulating reservations, are carried out in accordance with the Vienna Convention." As of 8 December 1991, the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties entered into force for Belarus on 1 May 1986 and for Ukraine on 14 May 1986.
Key points
According to the information from the depository of the international agreement published on the Unified Register of Legal Acts and Other Documents of the Commonwealth of Independent States (under the executive committee of the Commonwealth of Independent States), the Agreement was signed during the first meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS, which was officially held in Minsk.
The text of the Belovezh Accords contains an introduction and 14 Articles. The original text is available in official translation on the Council of Europe website.
The main obligations of the parties to the Agreement, ratified by all former Soviet republics except Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, includes the following:
- The end of the existence of the USSR, with the "setting up of lawfully constituted democratic… independent states… on the basis of mutual recognition of and respect for State sovereignty".
- Establishing on the territory the "right to self-determination" along with "norms relating to human and people's rights".
- "Parties guarantee to their citizens, regardless of their nationality or other differences, equal rights and freedoms. Each of the Parties guarantees to the citizens of the other Parties, and also to stateless persons resident in their territory, regardless of national affiliation or other differences, civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights and freedoms in accordance with the universal recognized international norms relating to human rights" (Article 2).
- "The Parties, desirous of facilitating the expression, preservation and development of the distinctive ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious characteristics of the national minorities resident in their territories and of the unique ethno-cultural regions that have come into being, will extend protection to them" (Article 3).
- "Equitable cooperation" (Article 4).
- "Territorial integrity" along with "freedom of movement of citizens" (Article 5).
According to the text of Article 6, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus form a "common military and strategic space" and "united armed forces."
Immediately after the signing of the Agreement on 8 December 1991, Russian president Yeltsin called U.S. president George H. W. Bush and specifically read him Article 6 of the Agreement. "First of all, I talked with USSR Minister of Defense Shaposhnikov. I want to read the 6th Article of the Agreement. As a matter of fact Shaposhnikov fully agreed and supported our position. I am now reading Article 6." ... "Please note well the next paragraph, Mr. President (and I urge the interpreter to translate this precisely)." ... "Dear George, I am finished. This is extremely, extremely important. Because of the tradition between us, I couldn't even wait ten minutes to call you."
Statement by the Heads of State
Simultaneously with the Belovezha Agreement, a statement by the heads of state was adopted at a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS. In the statement, the parties in particular declared that:
- negotiations on the preparation of a new Union Treaty had reached an impasse, and the objective process of the republics' withdrawal from the USSR and the formation of independent states had become a reality,
- the short-sighted policy of the center has led to a deep economic and political crisis, the collapse of production, and a catastrophic decline in the standard of living of virtually all segments of society,
- aware of our responsibility to our peoples and the world community, and of the urgent need for practical implementation of political and economic reforms, we hereby declare the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, on which the parties signed an agreement on 8 December 1991.
- The member states of the Commonwealth intend to pursue a course of strengthening international peace and security.
- They guarantee the fulfillment of international obligations arising from treaties and agreements of the former Soviet Union and ensure single control over nuclear weapons and their non-proliferation.
Statement by the Governments on coordinating economic policy
At the same time, Kebich, Burbulis and Fokin signed a Statement by the governments of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine on coordinating economic policy. According to the statement, "Maintaining and developing the close economic ties that have been established between our countries is vital for stabilizing the national economy and creating the conditions for economic recovery." The parties agreed, in particular,