Video: '25/12/1991 Mikhail Gorbachev Resignation Speech'
(Christmas Day, Wednesday, December 25, 1991, 7:00 p.m. Eastern European Time; during the Dissolution of the Soviet Union; part of the Cold War and the Revolutions of 1989) — Mikhail Gorbachev, the trailblazer of the Soviet Union’s retreat from the Cold War and the spark for the democratic reforms that ended 70 years of Communist tyranny, told a weary, anxious nation tonight that he was resigning as president and closing out the union.
‘I hereby discontinue my activities at the post of President of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,’ declared the 60-year-old politician, the last leader of a totalitarian empire that was undone across the six years and nine months of his stewardship.
Gorbachev made no attempt in his brief, leanly worded television address to mask his bitter regret and concern at being forced from office by the creation of the new Commonwealth of Independent States, composed of 11 former republics of the collapsed Soviet empire under the informal lead of President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia.
Video: 'Gorbachev: The Final Hours - ABC Prime Time Live (1991)' (aired Dec. 26, 1991)
Within hours of Gorbachev’s resignation, Western and other nations began recognition of Russia and the other former republics.
“We’re now living in a new world,” Gorbachev declared in recognizing the rich history of his tenure. “An end has been put to the Cold War and to the arms race, as well as to the mad militarization of the country, which has crippled our economy, public attitudes and morals. The threat of nuclear war has been removed.”
At 7:32 p.m. in Moscow, after Gorbachev left the Kremlin, the Soviet flag was lowered and the State Anthem of the Soviet Union was played for the last time, and the Russian tricolor was raised in its place at 7:45 p.m., symbolically marking the end of the Soviet Union.
At 9:00 p.m. EST, U.S. President George H. W. Bush held a brief televised speech officially recognizing the independence of the 11 remaining republics.
Video: 'Cold war ended 25 December 1991'
On Dec. 26, 1991, the Soviet of Republics, the upper chamber of the Union’s Supreme Soviet, voted the Soviet Union out of existence (the lower chamber, the Council of the Union, had been unable to work since December 12, when the recall of the Russian deputies left it without a quorum).
The following day Yeltsin moved into Gorbachev’s former office, though the Russian authorities had taken over the suite two days earlier. The Soviet Armed Forces were placed under the command of the Commonwealth of Independent States, but were eventually subsumed by the newly independent republics, with the bulk becoming the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.
By the end of 1991, the few remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased operation, and individual republics assumed the central government’s role.
