Dissolution of the Soviet Union

The Soviet Union dissolves, December 1991 A failed hard-line coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991 sealed the country's fate. On December 8 the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus met at a state dacha near Viskuli, in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha forest of Belarus, to form the Commonwealth of Independent States, and on December 25 Gorbachev resigned as Soviet president. A superpower that had shaped most of the century broke into independent republics, ending the Cold War and leaving questions about borders, nuclear weapons and Russian power that still drive the news.