Hello and thank you for downloading witness on the BBC World Service with me,

Dina Newman. I'm taking you back to December 1991.

When the national leaders of three Soviet republics, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, signed a treaty to dissolve

the USSR against the wishes of the overall Soviet leader Mikhail Garbachev. December 1991.

Communism had already collapsed across Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall in

1989. But the Soviet Union still existed, ruled by the Communist Party with Mikhail Grubachov as its head.

Mr. Grubachov had had a difficult year.

In August 1991, hard-line communists unhappy with the liberal policies of Peristroika had attempted a coup against him, but he'd survived. Now, however, independence movements were gaining popularity

in many of the 15 Soviet republics. Ukraine and several smaller republics had already held independence referendums.

This weekend there's almost certain to be a huge majority in favor of Ukrainian independence.

As many as three out of every four voters are expected to say yes to a divorce

from the Soviet Union.

The Ukrainian leader Leagnitkrav Chuk was already looking for ways to break free from

Moscow. I'm a lot of the state.

My priority was to create an independent Ukrainian state

and how to avoid crushing millions of people under the wreckage of the old state.

The meeting which eventually led to the surprise collapse of the old Soviet state was held in Belarus

at the invitation of the Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich.

Le Annette Kravchuk and the Russian leader Boris Yeltsin were to join him for a three-way

meeting.

Unlike Ukraine, Belarus had not yet declared its wish for independence, and so Mr. Shushkevich

in says he had no political aims in mind.

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