Kravchuk's revelations: the USSR could not have collapsed without Yeltsin and the Communist Party
The USSR would not have collapsed without Boris Yeltsin, the Communist Party, and the Ukrainian referendum. Leonid Kravchuk and Gennady Burbulis, signatories of the Belovezh Accords, stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
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Leonid Kravchuk recalled that the referendum was preceded by the “Act of Independence” adopted by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. Without the votes of the communists it would not have been possible to vote, he emphasized.
" There were 380 members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 380, but 226 were needed to make a decision. We didn't have 226, we had 45. But we needed to vote. We managed to convince them to vote. We voted for independence and for holding an all-Ukrainian referendum. But that wasn't the end of it. Anyone who thinks Ukraine became independent ( after the Rada's decision ) is mistaken," Kravchuk said.
The act of declaring independence alone was not enough, since there was no mechanism for secession from the USSR. It was necessary to destroy the USSR, which was done in Belovezhskaya Pushcha.
“We gathered in Belovezhye, proposing a very interesting formula about the existence of the USSR as a geopolitical system, that it ceases to exist. But what if there is no mechanism? Well, if there is no mechanism for something, then what should be done with it? Destroy it. Then everything will fall into place. That’s what we did in Belovezhskaya Pushcha - we signed a document that the USSR as a geopolitical system, as a subject of international law, ceases to exist. These two things are connected.
Those who think that by adopting the act of independence in the Verkhovna Rada, we immediately gained independence..... There would not have been Belovezhskaya Pushcha, there would have been no position of Boris Yeltsin regarding the USSR, there would not have been his will united into practical decisions, if the USSR stayed, they wouldn’t have let us out of their embrace,” said Leonid Kravchuk
Gennady Burbulis said that he and Yeltsin, when preparing the Belovezhskaya Agreement, were “inspired” by the Ukrainian referendum, and the election of Yeltsin as president (i.e., granting him greater powers, the boundaries of which are poorly defined) became the same prerequisite for signing the Belovezhskaya Agreement as the Ukrainian referendum.
“We were full of a certain anxiety - how will we cope with this historical challenge that we faced then? Boris Nikolayevich and I were extremely inspired by the all-Ukrainian consensus on December 1, the referendum. By and large, this combination of a popular referendum and the first election of a president as head of state is one and the same choice. Only on one side is the choice of the foundation, the foundation, and at the same time, the choice of the head,” Burbulis said.
English version :: Read in English Kravchuk's Revelations: The USSR Could Not Have Collapsed Without Yeltsin and the Communist Party