Gorbachev Resigns as Soviet President

Context

By the late 1980s the Soviet economy had entered a period of prolonged stagnation marked by declining productivity, shortages, and mounting foreign debt. Mikhail Gorbachev, who became General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1985, introduced the policies of perestroika to restructure the economy and glasnost to increase openness in political and cultural life. These reforms loosened central controls and allowed long-suppressed national sentiments to surface across the fifteen union republics.

What Happened

On December 8, 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed the Belovezh Accords declaring that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist as a geopolitical reality and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States in its place. Eleven republics formally joined the CIS on December 21 at Alma-Ata. With the central government stripped of authority, Gorbachev delivered a televised address on December 25 announcing his resignation as president and transferring the nuclear launch codes to Russian president Boris Yeltsin. That evening the Soviet hammer-and-sickle flag was lowered from the Kremlin flagpole and replaced by the Russian tricolor.

Aftermath

The following day, December 26, the Soviet of the Republics of the Supreme Soviet adopted a declaration formally dissolving the union and ending its existence under international law. Russia assumed the Soviet Union's seat at the United Nations and its other treaty obligations as the recognized successor state.

Legacy

The peaceful conclusion of the Soviet experiment ended seventy-four years of one-party Communist rule in Russia and concluded the Cold War bipolar order. Fifteen independent states emerged, each pursuing its own path of market transition and political reform, while the former Soviet sphere experienced both new opportunities for democratic development and a series of ethnic conflicts and economic dislocations that shaped Eurasian geopolitics for decades.