Historical Events
Belarus · Events 4
Formation of the USSR
On 30 December 1922 the Soviet republics of Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Transcaucasia concluded a union treaty as equals, creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The autonomization draft that would have absorbed the republics into the Russian federation was abandoned after Lenin's intervention, in favor of a union of equal republics with an explicit right of secession. The korenizatsiya (nativization) policy that followed had the state systematically promote national languages and national cadres, a nationality policy without precedent in the world of its time.
The Chernobyl Disaster
On 26 April 1986, reactor no. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine exploded, spreading large amounts of radioactive material across Europe. The reflex to minimize and conceal the accident became a test for a new leadership that professed glasnost. A government commission under Ryzhkov led the response, and hundreds of thousands of liquidators were mobilized at the risk of radiation.
The Novo-Ogaryovo Process and the New Union Treaty
When the March 1991 referendum returned 76 percent for preserving the union, Gorbachev made it his last political capital. On 23 April, at the Novo-Ogaryovo estate outside Moscow, he issued the 9+1 statement with the leaders of nine republics, Yeltsin's Russia included, opening negotiations on a new union treaty that would recast the USSR as a voluntary federation of sovereign republics; six republics, among them the Baltic states and Georgia, stayed away from the start. Through a summer of tugging over taxation and the division of powers a draft was completed, with signing set for 20 August. In a late-night meeting at the end of July, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Nazarbayev agreed that after the signing the hardliners, Kryuchkov and Pavlov among them, would be replaced; the KGB's microphones carried the conversation straight to its subjects.
The August Coup and the Collapse of the USSR
In August 1991, hardliners seeking to stop the signing of a new union treaty confined Gorbachev and set up a State Committee for the State of Emergency to stage a coup. Led by Kryuchkov, Yazov, Pavlov and others, the coup collapsed within three days as Yeltsin resisted atop a tank and citizens rallied. The coup’s failure only accelerated the dissolution of the union.