TWENTY YEARS SINCE THE COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES WAS FOUNDED, AND THE SOVIET UNION DOOMED

THE COMMONWEALTH

OF INDEPENDENT STATES

(CIS) FOUNDED

December 8, 1991

THE LEADERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF

INDEPENDENT STATES MEET IN MOSCOW

A COUPLE OF YEARS AFTER THE FOUNDING

On December 8, 1991, the leaders of the three Slavic republics of the Soviet Union -- Boris Yeltsin of Russia, Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, and Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus -- met in the Belavezha Woods government retreat to sign the USSR out of existence. The independence of the three Baltic republics had already been internationally recognized after the failed August coup. That left nine of the fifteen republics in limbo. Eight of the nine -- all but Georgia -- signed on to the new "Commonwealth of Independent States" (CIS) on December 21; and on December 25 Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, bowed to the inevitable. A contemporary account can be found here. A retrospective with video footage of the December 8 signing can be found here.

By the time of the Moscow CIS leaders meeting photograph above, there had been two noticeable developments. Georgia had joined; its president, Eduard Shevardnadze, is fourth from the right. One of the original signers of the Belavezha Accords, Stanislav Shushkevich of Belarus, had already been replaced by Alexander Lukashenko (he is fifth from the left, turning towards Boris Yeltsin). Yeltsin is seated in the middle of the table. Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine, the third member of the Belavezha troika, is first on the left.

All of the original three have left their posts, and Yeltsin has died. Lukashenko is still president of Belarus.