Dissolution of the Soviet Union

On 8 December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus signed the Belavezha Accords declaring the Soviet Union effectively dissolved and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States; by 21 December, eleven of the twelve remaining republics had joined. Gorbachev resigned as President of a country that no longer existed on 25 December 1991, and the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time the following day. The collapse ended 74 years of one-party communist rule but also triggered a decade of severe economic contraction, hyperinflation, and social upheaval across the successor states.