Former chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Belarus Stanislav Shushkevich accused ex-president of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev in the collapse of the USSR. RIA Novosti reports.
The politician said that on October 20, 1991, the President of the USSR brought a union treaty, according to which a confederation was created. “At the same time, it was proposed to consider a structure as a confederation, in which President Gorbachev will be the chief, and instead of the Politburo he will have a State Council,” Shushkevich specified.
He stressed that it could not be called a confederation, and added that by that time the time was lost. “The main enemy of the preservation of the USSR in the form of a confederation was Gorbachev. It was necessary to talk about the confederation when they talked about the preservation of the USSR and when there was this deceitful referendum in March,” Shushkevich said.
The politician explained that Gorbachev did not like the fact that the presence of a president in the confederation was not mandatory, as in a unitary state. “Gorbachev wanted to be in charge. He was always trying to achieve this, by all kinds of methods,” continued Shushkevich.
In his opinion, the draft union treaty of October 20 was the apogee of these aspirations of the Soviet leader.