Belovezhskaya Forest is remembered in the narrative as the secluded setting where Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk, and Stanislav Shushkevich decided to dissolve the Soviet Union. At a hunting lodge, a secret gathering and heavy drinking turn a gathering of three republic leaders into the scene of a momentous political rupture.

The Secret Meeting

Yeltsin travels from Moscow without telling Gorbachev what he intends to do. The three presidents meet at a hunting lodge in Belovezhskaya Forest, where they drink large quantities of vodka and talk in the sauna. Their discussion, as the narrative presents it, is strikingly unprepared: none of them has a clear idea of what a federation or confederation might mean.

Instead, they return to a simple historical rationale. Since their three republics had created the Soviet Union in 1922, they reason, they have the right to dissolve it. The forest’s seclusion allows this decision to be reached away from Moscow and without Gorbachev’s knowledge.

The Decision and Its Immediate Aftermath

Yeltsin becomes so drunk that Kravchuk and Shushkevich have to carry him to bed. Before losing consciousness, he calls George Bush (senior) so the American president will be the first to hear that the Soviet Union no longer exists. The account sets this announcement against the meeting’s makeshift character: an immense political consequence is delivered by a leader who must first be carried from the sauna to bed.

Shushkevich, described as the least important member of the three-president group, is left to inform Gorbachev. Gorbachev is aghast and asks what will become of him. The reply that follows shifts attention from the forest’s decisive act to the comparatively comfortable fate of the deposed Soviet leader: he will receive a dacha and a foundation, and be able to give highly paid lectures.

Narrative Significance

The forest becomes a place where the end of the Soviet Union is depicted not as the execution of a prepared constitutional plan, but as a secret agreement among three leaders whose stated justification rests on the republics’ role in the Union’s creation. The contrast between the decision’s historical scale and the vodka-soaked informality of the meeting gives the setting its force. From this secluded lodge, the narrative moves directly to Gorbachev, excluded from the decision and suddenly confronted with the end of his political world.