to draw up a treaty to replace the old Soviet Union, adding, “I think I may now say where—in Minsk.”
But nothing was certain when the three leaders sat down for a dinner of game and pork that snowy evening in the forest.
With a dramatic gesture, Yeltsin produced the text of Gorbachev’s union agreement and put it on the table. According to Kravchuk he said, “Do you agree with this? Will you sign it? Will you discuss which articles to take out? Your answer will determine the position of Russia. If you sign it I will sign it.” Kravchuk replied “Nyet!” to all three questions.
From that moment on, the Russian leader no longer had to pay lip service to the cause of a union containing Ukraine. He had fulfilled his promise to Gorbachev to ask Kravchuk one more time to sign the union treaty. Kravchuk had refused. The Rubicon had been crossed at last. Here among the pine trees his thoughts went back to the Soviet military actions in Tbilisi and Vilnius, and he renewed his determination that they were not going to wait calmly for a new tragedy “with our paws folded back like timid rabbits.”
They agreed that it was too risky to start negotiations at their level. Instead their support teams should work through the night to find a formula that would meet their aspirations.
The tension eased. According to Kravchuk, “We drained our glasses, chatted, there was conversation and toasts, joking and laughter. Belovezh vodka [Belarus’s herbal vodka] was there. I drank it too.” The Ukrainian president took some pleasure in disclosing that even Ukrainian districts with large Russian populations had voted for independence in the referendum of December 1. “What? Even the Donbass voted yes?” exclaimed Yeltsin.
Between ten and eleven o’clock the trio retired to the main bathhouse, along with Burbulis, Korzhakov, and the Ukrainian and Belarusian prime ministers, and relaxed there until after midnight in clouds of steam. Shushkevich denied later charges that they got drunk, though there was plenty of alcohol available in the
Yeltsin’s team of Gaidar, Kozyrev, and Shakhrai meanwhile invited the experts from Ukraine and Belarus to work with them in a chalet where the Russians were billeted. The Belarusians stayed away, however, and the Ukrainian delegates hung around in the dark and snow outside, occasionally sending an emissary into what Kozyrev referred to as “our creative laboratory.”
Shakhrai proved to be the most imaginative in finding the precise formula that was to spell the end of the Soviet Union. A Cossack lawyer with mournful eyes and a moustache that curled round his full lips, he had drafted many decrees for Yeltsin, including the order banning the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He suggested that as the USSR was founded on the basis of a 1922 treaty signed by Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine (and the Transcaucasian Federation, which had ceased to exist), so the three surviving states could legally dismantle it.
In their accounts of the meeting both Kozyrev and Gaidar maintain they were startled at the simplicity of the idea and quickly agreed. After midnight the Belarusians and Ukrainians came in from the cold. They all nodded as they read the words. They had a formula to take to their masters. It stated: “We, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation (RSFSR), and Ukraine, as originators of the USSR on the basis of the Union Treaty of 1922, confirm that the USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, ceases its existence.”
In Gaidar’s words, this was the knife that would allow them “to cut the Gordian knot of legal ambiguity and begin the business of state-building in countries that were already de facto independent.”
The drafters drew up proposals for a successor association called a Commonwealth of Independent States, to which other Soviet republics would be invited to join. “They were our initiatives, not those of the presidents,” insisted Gaidar in an interview years later. “The final proposals were deliberated at the second level.” Burbulis also insisted, “We came to Minsk without a text and without any carefully weighed idea of a commonwealth. It was born right there.”
There was no copier at the lodge, and the officials had to pass papers through two fax machines to make extra copies. Gaidar wrote out the final texts containing fourteen articles in longhand. At 4 a.m. Kozyrev trudged off through the snowdrifts to bring the sheets of paper to the typist’s room. There was one stenographer at the lodge, Evgeniya Pateychuk, a terrified young woman who worked for the forestry director and who had been fetched by the Belarus KGB at short notice, without even being given enough time, as she recalled, to comb her hair.[205] Unwilling to wake her up, Kozyrev put the documents under the locked door of the business office. There was consternation in the morning when the typist said that she found no papers. It was some time before they realized a cleaning lady had put them in a trash can. When they were eventually extracted by Korzhakov from a bag of rubbish, Pateychuk found she could not decipher much of Gaidar’s handwriting, and he had to dictate a lot of it over again.
While this was going on, Yeltsin, Kravchuk, and Shushkevich gathered for breakfast of fried eggs, black bread, ham, and cheese. The Russian president was in fine fettle. Kravchuk found him stone cold sober. “I don’t exaggerate! He was in good form, vigorous, he had ideas.” The three leaders received their copies of Gaidar’s handiwork in late morning, typed at speed by Ms Pateychuk on the East German-made Optima electric business typewriter she had brought with her. They agreed to the idea of a commonwealth as a fig leaf for a divorce. Everything was inevitable now. They made some minor amendments to the draft paragraphs, toasted each completed article with a sip of cognac, and sent the pages off for retyping. The documents were passed through the two fax machines and the final versions clipped into three red hard-backed folders.
Meanwhile workers carried a long marble-top table into the foyer of the Viskuli hunting lodge. Officials placed the folders in front of miniature flags for Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Five journalists, cold and hungry after having spent the night in a nearby village waiting for they knew not what, were ushered in to report the ceremony.
Kravchuk, Shushkevich and Yeltsin entered and took their places along the table, with their top aides standing behind them. Shushkevich sat in the middle, as the host, with Yeltsin on his left and Kravchuk on his right. They opened the folders, titled “Agreement on the Creation of a Commonwealth of Independent States.” The contents spelled out the new reality. After seven decades the USSR was finished in all but name, and its 293 million people destined to be separated among the constituent republics. The new entity would have its headquarters in Minsk. It would have no flag, no ministry of foreign affairs, no parliament, no citizenship, no tax-raising powers and no president. There was, however, a commitment to set up a single military control over nuclear weapons. Other republics would be invited to join.
Suddenly a voice was heard, with a swear word: “Where are the pens?” There were no writing instruments available to sign the Soviet Union’s death warrant. Everyone standing around began producing ball points, felt tips, and fountain pens from their pockets. Valery Drozdov, deputy editor of the Belarus newspaper
In a profound silence the three leaders signed the documents in the red folders. Only Drozdov took note of the exact time on his watch, which ironically bore the symbol of the USSR, the hammer and sickle, on its face. It was 2:17 p.m., on Sunday, December 8, 1991.[207]
Waiters began bustling around with trays bearing glasses of champagne, and the high-ceilinged foyer echoed to the clinking of glasses. Yeltsin, Kravchuk and Shushkevich posed for the cameras, the Ukrainian president smiling like a cat with cream.
“I well remember how a sensation of freedom and lightness suddenly came over me,” wrote Yeltsin in his account of the moment. “In signing this agreement Russia… was throwing off the traditional image of ‘potentate of half the world,’ of armed conflict with Western civilization, and the role of policeman in the resolution of ethnic conflicts.”
Others reacted differently. Shakhrai felt as if they were burying a relative. Gaidar recalled, “We all had a heavy burden in our hearts.”
Drozdov did not get his pen back. “One of the three put it in his pocket out of force of habit,” he recalled. “I believe it was Yeltsin.”
Evgeniya Pateychuk, the typist, stepped out into the fresh air with her boss, forestry official Sergey Balyuk. It was already twilight and a light snow was falling. “So, Sergey Sergeyevich, what have we done!” she said. Years later she would protest: “I typed what I was given; understanding came later, in a day or two.” In her village of Kamenyuki twelve miles away, she became known as the woman who destroyed the Union.
Yeltsin had not invited Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, to the meeting of the Slav leaders in the forest. The head of the powerful central Asian republic was a Gorbachev ally and had yet to declare independence. If they could get him to join them in Belovezhkaya Pushcha, they could present him with a fait
