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![]() The signing ceremony at Viskuli Government House | |
Type | Treaty establishing a loose regional organisation |
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Signed | 8 December 1991 |
Location | Viskuli, Belovezh Forest, Belarus (de facto) Minsk, Minsk Oblast, Belarus (de jure) |
Effective | |
Signatories | |
Parties | |
Depositary | ![]() |
Languages | Belarusian, Russian, Ukrainian |
The Belovezha Accords (Belarusian: Белавежскае пагадненне, romanized: Bielaviežskaje pahadniennie, Russian: Беловежские соглашения, romanized: Belovezhskiye soglasheniya, Ukrainian: Біловезькі угоди, romanized: Bilovezʹki uhody) is the agreement declaring that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) had effectively ceased to exist and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place as a successor entity. 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:[1]
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."[2]