Stanislav Stanislavovich Shushkevich (15 December 1934 – 3 May 2022) was a Belarusian politician and scientist who served as the first head of state of independent Belarus after it seceded from the Soviet Union, serving as the first chairman of the Supreme Soviet (also called chairman of Parliament or president) from 1991 to 1994. He supported social democratic reforms and played a key role in the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States. He later became an opposition leader against Alexander Lukashenko.
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Stanislav Shushkevich in the context of Belovezha Accords
The Agreement on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (officially), or unofficially the Minsk Agreement and best known as the Belovezha Accords, is the agreement declaring that the Soviet Union (USSR) had effectively ceased to exist and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place as an organization created by the same Union Republics. The documentation was signed at the state dacha near Viskuli in Belovezhskaya Pushcha, Belarus on 8 December 1991, by leaders of three of the four republics (except for the defunct Transcaucasian SFSR) which had signed the 1922 Treaty on the Creation of the USSR:
- Belarusian Parliament chairman Stanislav Shushkevich and Prime Minister of Belarus Vyacheslav Kebich
- Russian president Boris Yeltsin and First Deputy Prime Minister of the RSFSR/Russian Federation Gennady Burbulis
- Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk and Ukrainian prime minister Vitold Fokin
As Shushkevich said in 2006, by December "the union had already been broken up by the putschists" who in August 1991 tried to remove Mikhail Gorbachev from power to prevent the transformation of the Soviet Union into what Shushkevich described as "a confederation". The three wanted to avoid what happened in the breakup of Yugoslavia and "there was no other way out of the situation than a divorce."