Moscow, December 25, 1991

Kravchuk knew exactly what he wanted. Before leaving Kiev, the Ukrainian president had told American diplomat Thomas Niles that he was going to Belovezh Forest to sign an interstate agreement with Russia and Belarus that would have no center He would claim in his memoirs that there had been months of secret talks beforehand with the Russian and Belarusian leaders that led to the deal they were about to do—which could explain Yeltsin’s mysterious remark in January that the presidents of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan had decided to draw up a treaty to replace the old Soviet Union, adding, “I think I may now say where—in Minsk.”

But nothing was certain when the three leaders sat down for a dinner of game and pork that snowy evening in the forest.

With a dramatic gesture, Yeltsin produced the text of Gorbachev’s union agreement and put it on the table. According to Kravchuk he said, “Do you agree with this? Will you sign it? Will you discuss which articles to take out? Your answer will determine the position of Russia. If you sign it I will sign it.” Kravchuk replied “Nyet!” to all three questions.

From that moment on, the Russian leader no longer had to pay lip service to the cause of a union containing Ukraine. He had fulfilled his promise to Gorbachev to ask Kravchuk one more time to sign the union treaty. Kravchuk had refused. The Rubicon had been crossed at last. Here among the pine trees his thoughts went back to the Soviet military actions in Tbilisi and Vilnius, and he renewed his determination that they were not going to wait calmly for a new tragedy “with our paws folded back like timid rabbits.”

They agreed that it was too risky to start negotiations at their level. Instead their support teams should work through the night to find a formula that would meet their aspirations.

The tension eased. According to Kravchuk, “We drained our glasses, chatted, there was conversation and toasts, joking and laughter. Belovezh vodka [Belarus’s herbal vodka] was there. I drank it too.” The Ukrainian president took some pleasure in disclosing that even Ukrainian districts with large Russian populations had voted for independence in the referendum of December 1. “What? Even the Donbass voted yes?” exclaimed Yeltsin.

Between ten and eleven o’clock the trio retired to the main bathhouse, along with Burbulis, Korzhakov, and the Ukrainian and Belarusian prime ministers, and relaxed there until after midnight in clouds of steam. Shushkevich denied later charges that they got drunk, though there was plenty of alcohol available in the banya. Yeltsin did not even get dizzy, he claimed, and Shushkevich himself did not touch alcohol, as “I considered that drinking on the eve of signing such a fate-changing document would be a crime.”

Yeltsin’s team of Gaidar, Kozyrev, and Shakhrai meanwhile invited the experts from Ukraine and Belarus to work with them in a chalet where the Russians were billeted. The Belarusians stayed away, however, and the Ukrainian delegates hung around in the dark and snow outside, occasionally sending an emissary into what Kozyrev referred to as “our creative laboratory.”

Shakhrai proved to be the most imaginative in finding the precise formula that was to spell the end of the Soviet Union. A Cossack lawyer with mournful eyes and a moustache that curled round his full lips, he had drafted many decrees for Yeltsin, including the order banning the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. He suggested that as the USSR was founded on the basis of a 1922 treaty signed by Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine (and the Transcaucasian Federation, which had ceased to exist), so the three surviving states could legally dismantle it.

In their accounts of the meeting both Kozyrev and Gaidar maintain they were startled at the simplicity of the idea and quickly agreed. After midnight the Belarusians and Ukrainians came in from the cold. They all nodded as they read the words. They had a formula to take to their masters. It stated: “We, the Republic of Belarus, the Russian Federation (RSFSR), and Ukraine, as originators of the USSR on the basis of the Union Treaty of 1922, confirm that the USSR, as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality, ceases its existence.”

In Gaidar’s words, this was the knife that would allow them “to cut the Gordian knot of legal ambiguity and begin the business of state-building in countries that were already de facto independent.”

The drafters drew up proposals for a successor association called a Commonwealth of Independent States, to which other Soviet republics would be invited to join. “They were our initiatives, not those of the presidents,” insisted Gaidar in an interview years later. “The final proposals were deliberated at the second level.” Burbulis also insisted, “We came to Minsk without a text and without any carefully weighed idea of a commonwealth. It was born right there.”