What primary documents (e.g., minutes of December 1991 meetings) show how Yeltsin, Ukraine, and Belarus negotiated the USSR’s end?

1. The core primary document: the Belovezhskaya Accords text and signatures

The Belovezhskaya Accords, signed at the Viskuli hunting lodge in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on 8 December 1991, is the fundamental primary document: its text declares that the USSR “has ceased to exist as a subject of international law and a geopolitical reality,” establishes the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and was signed by the three leaders and their delegations, which is documented by state-presidential archives and reference works ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

2. Contemporaneous follow-up records: phone calls, press briefings and archival releases

Beyond the printed agreement, contemporaneous records capture the immediate political choreography: a celebrated archival release includes a conversation less than ten minutes after the signing in which Yeltsin speaks about calling U.S. President George H.W. Bush—evidence of the leaders’ swift external communications—and press conferences and short-form transcripts record how the trio sought to present the decision internationally ^{[4] [6] [7]}.

3. Supplementary primary layers: the Alma-Ata declaration and accession documents

The Belovezhskaya Accords was followed by a broader Declaration signed in Alma-Ata on 21 December 1991, where additional republics joined the CIS and thereby provided documentary confirmation that the three‑party agreement had become a wider political reality; these accession statements and the Alma-Ata declaration are treated in primary-source collections and in national presidential libraries ^{[3] [8]}.

4. Eyewitness memoirs, interviews and institutional retrospectives as near‑primary sources

Direct minutes of closed deliberations at Belovezhskaya are scarce in published official form; much of the color and step‑by‑step bargaining is reconstructed from memoirs, interviews with participants (notably Shushkevich and Burbulis), and institutional retrospectives such as the Wilson Center and The Moscow Times, which publish firsthand recollections and contemporary reportage that operate as primary testimony rather than formal minutes ^{[5] [6] [9]}.

5. What the documentary record does not fully supply—and why that matters

Scholarly and archival surveys note the relative absence of published verbatim minutes of every private session in Viskuli and emphasize that some internal debates survive only in later memoirs, press accounts, and archival releases rather than systematic official minutes; researchers therefore rely on the signed texts (Belovezhskaya and Alma‑Ata), contemporaneous audio/press transcripts, and participant testimony to reconstruct the negotiation dynamics ^{[2] [4] [10]}.

6. Competing narratives and interpretive caution in the sources

Sources disagree over who instigated the secret meeting and how premeditated the move was—Kravchuk and Shushkevich offer different accounts about who proposed excluding Gorbachev and who invited whom—which is reflected in The Moscow Times, BBC and Atlantic Council retrospectives; readers must weigh the signed documents and archival records against partisan memoir claims when attributing initiative and motive ^{[6] [10] [11]}.

7. How historians and archives recommend proceeding to verify the record

To trace the negotiations step by step, the primary starting points are the published Belovezhskaya Accords text and its signatory documentation in national presidential libraries and archival projects, supplemented by the Alma‑Ata declaration and the contemporaneous press and audio releases curated by archival projects such as the National Security Archive and institutional repositories that publish call transcripts and press briefings ^{[3] [4] [7]}.