Concise Russian history for a traveler

Soviet and post-Soviet Russia

reform, and to negotiate treaties with the Baltic republics, in which he acknowledged their right to independence and their right to secede from the union.

August 19-21, 1991, a poorly executed coup attempt occurred, bringing an end to the Communist Party and accelerating the movement to disband the Soviet Union. The coup was carried out by hard-line Communist Party officials, attempting to avert a new liberalized union treaty and return to the old-line party values. The most significant anti-coup role was played by Yeltsin.

The U.S.S.R. ceased to exist on December 25, 1991. Russia and 10 other former Soviet republics, having declared themselves independent, had founded the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In April 1992 a treaty of unification was signed by 18 of Russia’s 20 minority republics. The two nonsigning states, Tatarstan and Chechen-Ingushetiya, resisted the treaty because of their own independence movements. The treaty defined authority between Moscow and the regions over an era extending from the Gulf of Finland to the Pacific coast.

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