Spoiler: the USSR is still dead A Putin adviser claims the Soviet Union still legally exists — what’s that about?
In late May 2025, several Russian public figures — including presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov — claimed that legally speaking, the Soviet Union still exists and that the breakup of the USSR by its constituent republics violated international law. At Meduza’s request, historian Alexey Uvarov outlines the legal basis for the USSR’s dissolution, the actual role of the 1991 Belavezha Accords, and the point at which the earlier referendum on preserving the USSR ceased to carry legal weight.
Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum in late May, Russian presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov claimed that the Soviet Union “still exists in some legal sense.” He also asserted that many constitutional law experts — including some in the West — support this view. In reality, this is an entirely fringe argument.
During his speech, Kobyakov pointed to procedural violations in the signing of the 1991 Belavezha Accords, but this argument distorts both legal principles and historical fact.
What were the Belavezha Accords?
An agreement on the dissolution of the USSR and the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), signed on December 8, 1991, in the Belavezha Forest by the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus — Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk, and Stanislav Shushkevich. In the agreement, the parties stated that “the USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, ceases to exist.”
Legally speaking, the Soviet Union did not cease to exist because of the Belavezha Accords. Rather, it was dissolved through a collective decision by 11 of the union republics in Almaty on December 21, 1991 — a process fully in line with international legal norms governing the termination of treaties. Invoking the March 1991 referendum on preserving the Soviet Union (which several republics boycotted) or the Russian State Duma’s 1996 resolution denouncing the Belavezha Accords won’t bring the Soviet Union back to life on paper for the simple reason that the original signatories of the 1922 treaty that created the Soviet Union chose to dissolve it themselves.
Forming and dissolving the USSR
The Treaty on the Creation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, signed on December 30, 1922, should be understood as a full-fledged international treaty of a constitutive nature. It established a new federal state, but in legal terms, it remained an intergovernmental agreement. As such, it falls under the purview of public international law — more specifically, the 1969 Vienna Convention, which codifies the rules on the formation, operation, and termination of international treaties.
The treaty was signed by the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR — all of which, at the time, were recognized as independent, sovereign states and full subjects of international law. Their independence was enshrined in their own constitutions, reinforced by bilateral treaties, affirmed through the practice of conducting independent foreign relations, and recognized by the broader international community. It was in this legal capacity that these states entered into the agreement to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
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With this in mind, there were two legitimate paths for legally dissolving the USSR.
The first — and the one implemented in 1991 — was based on the principles of international treaty law. The union republics needed to reach a new agreement (or adopt a joint protocol) to terminate the existence of the USSR by mutual consent. Such a document would address issues of succession, borders, property, debt, armed forces, citizenship, and international obligations. Once ratified by all parties, the original 1922 founding treaty would lose its force, and the new agreement on the dissolution of the Soviet Union would take effect on the date specified in the treaty.
There was also a second legal path, the procedure for which was outlined in a Soviet law adopted on April 3, 1990, titled “On the procedure for resolving issues related to a union republic’s secession from the USSR.” Any republic that wished to leave the Soviet Union had to hold a referendum recognized at the all-union level, formally notify the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of its decision to withdraw, and then — within the following 15 months — negotiate all the same matters of succession and division listed above.
The final terms of a republic’s withdrawal would then be recorded in an agreement that had to be approved by the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR. And if, after all these procedures, fewer than two republics remained as parties to the 1922 treaty, the remaining state would either have to amend the union treaty or formally acknowledge that it had ceased to be in force.
This second legal mechanism for dissolving the USSR had been established by the treaty’s original 1922 signatories. From the perspective of international law, there is no meaningful legal difference between these two scenarios — and choosing one over the other does not in any way imply that the Soviet Union’s dissolution is reversible or that the USSR somehow “still exists in some legal sense.”
So where do the Belavezha Accords come in?
The Belavezha Accords served as both a political and legal catalyst for the Soviet Union’s dissolution, but they did not in and of themselves dissolve the USSR.
The three republics that signed the accords — the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Belarusian SSR — did not have the authority to annul the 1922 treaty on behalf of all its signatories. Moreover, the state bodies in the Russian SFSR and the Belarusian SSR that ratified the accords did so in violation of both the Soviet constitution and the constitutions of the individual republics.
Politically, the Belavezha Accords laid the groundwork for the idea of replacing the USSR with a new structure — the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). On December 21, 1991, in Almaty, the remaining republics signed on to this vision.
Legally, the Soviet Union ceased to exist on that same day, when 11 of the 12 remaining republics (the exception was Georgia) signed the Protocol to the Belavezha Accords and the Alma-Ata Declaration. These documents transformed a political statement by three republics into a collective agreement among all of the 1922 treaty’s signatories to dissolve the USSR and establish the CIS.
This collective consent is fully consistent with Article 54 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which permits a treaty to be terminated “at any time by consent of all the parties.” From the moment the Almaty documents were signed, the former Soviet republics acquired international legal status as independent states. Their relations were now governed not by Soviet law, but by international law.
What about the March 1991 referendum, where a majority voted to preserve the USSR?
The March 1991 referendum, initiated by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, was intended to preserve the USSR in a renewed, more federal form. However, the results of this vote lost all legal force following the agreements signed in Almaty on December 21, 1991.
Though 76 percent of voters in the referendum ultimately supported preserving a “renewed union,” votes were only held in nine of the 15 Soviet republics. Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Georgia, and Armenia boycotted the referendum altogether, and Kazakhstan used its own wording of the question. The Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR later ruled that the decision to preserve the state was valid only in those republics where the referendum had taken place and where a majority had voted against dissolving the Soviet Union.
Soon afterward, even those republics that had held the vote began to revise or annul its results. Turkmenistan was the first: in October 1991, a nationwide vote showed majority support for independence. Ukraine followed in December, when its own referendum overrode the March plebiscite and confirmed the Act of Declaration of Independence passed by the Ukrainian parliament on August 24.
By the end of the year, the referendum’s results retained legal force in only seven republics: the Russian SFSR, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. But with the signing of the agreements in Almaty, the collective will of all participating republics nullified not only the March referendum but also any other union-wide legal acts.
As of December 21, 1991, the question of whether to preserve or restore the Soviet Union lost all legal foundation because the USSR itself ceased to exist as a subject of international law.
But didn’t the Russian State Duma declare the Belavezha Accords invalid?
On March 15, 1996, during Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, the second convocation of the Russian Federation’s State Duma (dominated by Communist Party deputies) passed a symbolic resolution denouncing the Belavezha Accords. Lawmakers intended it as a political gesture to signal to voters that the Russian parliament opposed the collapse of the Soviet Union. But the resolution had no legal force.
Formally, the Duma merely issued a declaration “restoring” the legal standing of the March 1991 referendum and declaring the Belavezha Accords of December 8, 1991, “null and void.” However, under the 1993 Russian Constitution, the Duma had no authority to repeal acts of the former Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR — nor to revive the 1922 treaty that created the USSR.
The declaration was not accompanied by any legal ratifications or coordination with the other former Soviet republics. It had no legal consequences domestically or internationally. Like the recent claims made by presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov, it relied solely on the Belavezha Accords and ignored the binding agreements signed in Almaty.
Whatever legal concerns existed about the constitutionality of the tripartite December 8 agreement signed in the Belavezha Forest, they do not affect the broader legal reality: the union republics later reached a mutual, multilateral consensus in Almaty to dissolve the Soviet Union. No single country can legally nullify a multilateral international treaty with a symbolic act.
Alexey Uvarov