Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) (in Russian: Содружество Независимых Государств (СНГ) - Sodruzhestvo Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv) consists of 12 of the 15 states of the former Soviet Union, the exceptions being the three Baltic states.
Initiating the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1991 and ignoring the referendum results confirming constitutional / institutional unity of the USSR (in fact, without disclosing the referendum results to citizens of the USSR), the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine met on December 8 in the Belovezhskaya Pushcha Natural Reserve, about 50 km (30 mi) north of Brest in Belarus, and signed an agreement establishing the CIS. At the same time they announced that the new confederation would be open to all republics of the former Soviet Union, as well as other nations sharing the same goals.
Gorbachev described this as an "illegal and dangerous" constitutional coup, but it soon became clear that the development could not be stopped: On December 21, 1991, the leaders of 11 of the 15 Soviet Socialist Republics met in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, and signed the charter, thus ratifying the initial CIS treaty de facto. The three Baltic republics — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — refused to join, as did Georgia: all four countries took the view that they had been illegally incorporated into the USSR in the first place. The charter stated that all the members were independent states and thereby effectively abolished the USSR.
The CIS is headquartered in Minsk, Belarus. The chairman of the CIS is known as the executive secretary. All of the CIS's executive secretaries have been from Belarus or Russia. The current executive secretary is former Russian interior minister, Vladimir Rushailo. The 11 original member states were Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. In December 1993, Georgia also joined the CIS in somewhat controversial circumstances, following a civil war in which Russian troops intervened on the side of the Shevardnadze government.
Although the CIS has few supranational powers, it is more than a purely symbolic organization and possesses coordinating powers in the realm of trade, finance, lawmaking and security. The most significant issue for the CIS is the establishment of a full-fledged free trade zone / economic union between the member states, to be launched in 2005. It has also promoted cooperation on democratisation and cross-border crime prevention.
During the 1992 Olympic Games (in Albertville and Barcelona), athletes from the CIS member states competed as the Unified Team for the last time. In other sports events in that year, such as the European Championships in football, athletes took part as representatives of the CIS. Since then, the member states have competed under their national banners.
