George H. W. Bush: Address to the Nation on the Commonwealth of Independent States

On Christmas Day 1991 the president of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Mikhail Gorbachev, resigned his post, declaring the presidency of the USSR defunct and recognizing the dissolution of the Soviet Union. His resignation marked the culmination of a number of dramatic geopolitical events that had dominated the news in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Cracks in the Soviet sphere of influence began to emerge when the pro-Soviet governments in Hungary and Poland collapsed. In November 1989 the Berlin Wall dividing Communist East Berlin and democratic West Berlin fell, and East and West Germany reunified in 1990. Pro-independence movements began in the Soviet republic of Lithuania in 1988 and spread to Estonia and Latvia in 1990. Also in 1990 the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party agreed to end its monopoly and allow competitive multiparty elections in the Soviet republics. Throughout this period, Gorbachev appeared to be abandoning the ideological rigidity of the Soviet system. Westerners became familiar with the Russian words glasnost, meaning “openness,” and perestroika, meaning “restructuring.” Hopes were high in the West that cold war tensions could be not just reduced but, indeed, ended.

Although Soviet hardliners tried to stage a coup in August 1991 with a view to preserving the Soviet regime, the coup failed, and it was clear that the Soviet Union was dissolving. A final dagger in the empire's heart came after the Ukraine voted for independence. On December 8, 1991, the republics of Russia, the Ukraine, and Belarus signed accords that formed the Commonwealth of Independent States and declared the Soviet Union dissolved. On December 21 the remaining Soviet republics, with the exception of Georgia, signed the accords, and Gorbachev resigned on December 25. That day, U.S. president George H. W. Bush delivered an address noting the event and expressing hope for the future.