Rasputin, a Siberian-born muzhik, or peasant, who But on December 30, , the quartet of British rockers preparing for their fifth-ever gig in the United States were using propane heaters to keep themselves and Sign up now to learn about This Day in History straight from your inbox. A fire in the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois, kills more than people on December 30, It was the deadliest theater fire in U.
Blocked fire exits and the lack of a fire-safety plan caused most of the deaths. The Iroquois Theater, designed by Benjamin John Salvi III walks into two separate abortion clinics in Brookline, Massachusetts, and shoots workers with a rifle, killing two receptionists and wounding five other employees.
He was captured the next day after firing 23 shots at a Norfolk, Virginia, medical clinic. Salvi, who On December 30, , the U. The latter were swiftly arrested. From then on it was Yeltsin who held all the cards.
In June he had convinced the Russian Supreme Soviet to adopt a text proclaiming the superiority of Russian law over its Soviet counterpart. On 12 June , the day he was elected President of Russia, Yeltsin declared the sovereignty of Russia and resigned from the Communist Party. The party was forbidden in the army and state bodies, and he later had it suspended.
Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary of the Communist Party. But the republics were increasingly reluctant to accept any limitation on their sovereignty.
Central government having lost its authority, demands for independence were heard on all sides, rendering the ultimate dislocation of the USSR inevitable.
Lithuania was the first SSR to declare its independence on 11 March Estonia and Latvia followed suit on 20 and 21 August respectively, during the attempted coup in Moscow.
In the Caucasus, Georgia was the first to declare independence on 9 April , followed by Azerbaijan on 30 August and Armenia on 23 September Secession by Ukraine on 1 December and its refusal to sign the Union Treaty signalled the ultimate demise of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev, still President of the USSR — having been elected on 1 March by the Soviet deputies after obtaining the necessary amendment to the Constitution — tried, in vain, to have a treaty of economic union adopted.
On 3 December he issued a dramatic appeal to prevent disintegration of the Union. Gorbachev had no option but to endorse this solution.
On 21 December, at a meeting in Alma-Ata 13 , eight other republics joined the initial three. It comprised 11 republics: Armenia, Azerbaijan formal membership in , Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova formal membership in , Uzbekistan formal membership in , Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Ukraine.
Gorbachev resigned on 25 December. Following in the footsteps of the former Eastern Bloc countries, the Baltic States were determined to move closer to the West. The logical conclusion of this trend came with membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union in The CIS Charter, which sets forth the basic rules for its operation, was adopted in That same year, the Member States signed an Agreement on Economic Union in order to develop economic and trade cooperation.
In the increasingly unsettled political situation in Abkhazia and the region of Tskhinvali forced Georgia to apply for CIS membership. Following a Russian initiative the executive bodies of the CIS were reformed in the first decade of the 21st century to give it renewed impetus. But most of the projects launched within the framework of the CIS have come to nothing. Its official aim is to combat terrorism and organised crime. Uzbekistan also left, but, yielding to Russian pressure, rejoined the organisation in early Since its inception, several States have opted to leave the CIS 14 prompted by fears of Russian interference in their domestic affairs.
But its application has been held up by the Council of Heads of State, so Turkmenistan is still officially a full member. The CIS was originally also intended to settle the problems posed by unravelling of the Soviet legacy nationalities, territory, legacy of the Soviet state apparatus, etc. In practice, the Russian Federation took over the Soviet legacy: the Kremlin, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, single command of strategic nuclear weapons, the seat as a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council, gold and diamond reserves, and oil resources.
In return, Russia recognised the inviolability of frontiers with its partner states, which was important for countries with large Russian minorities such as Ukraine and Kazakhstan. When the USSR collapsed, the borders between former SSRs were not officially disputed, but as soon as it started to disintegrate, some Autonomous Republics and Regions started demanding self-government or independence from the former SSRs.
Nationalist movements, unleashed by the break-up of the USSR and exacerbated by religious conflicts, sapped the independence of recently formed States, particularly in the Caucasus. When the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh 15 , an autonomous region that was part of the SSR of Azerbaijan, proclaimed its independence, it dealt a serious blow to Armenia, suspected by the international community of providing the self-proclaimed republic with military logistic support.
Sanctions were consequently imposed on Armenia, which, although it did not officially recognise the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, refused to condemn its incursions into Azerbaijan, prompting the fall of the regime in power.
Despite an attempt to stay neutral, the Soviets invaded and annexed territories of several Eastern European states after the start of World War II. These states included Poland and the Baltic states.
After Soviet forces captured Berlin and won the war in Europe in , the territory overtaken by the Soviet forces became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Bloc existed from to in opposition to the capitalist Western bloc.
The USSR had established communist governments in Eastern European countries, making Western countries fear the spread of communism to the rest of the world. The Soviets responded by consolidating power among Eastern bloc countries in under the Warsaw Pact. This sparked the Cold War. What ensued was a war of political, economic, and propaganda attacks between the Eastern and Western blocs.
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