Stanislav Shushkevich (December 15, 1934) is a Belarusian scientist and politician. From 1991 to 1994, he was chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Belarus. Best known as the representative of Belarus, which signed the Bialowieza Agreement on the creation of the CIS.
Origin and years of study
Where did Shushkevich Stanislav Stanislavovich begin his life? His biography began in Minsk in a Polish-Belarusian family. His mother, Helena Razumovska, was a translator and writer who published in Polish print media published in Belarus in the 1920s and 1930s, and his father was a Belarusian poet and writer. Three years after the birth of his son, he was repressed, served time in the mines of Kuzbass, was released only in 1946. Returning to his homeland, he began to teach in a rural school. But according to the vile practice of the Stalin jailers, he was again arrested in 1949 and exiled to the Krasnoyarsk Territory. He finally returned to Belarus only in 1956.
Surprisingly, the stigma of “the son of an enemy of the people”, which ruined (and even broke) the life of many of his peers Stanislav Shushkevich, apparently, did not affect his fate. In 1951 he graduated from high school, in the same year he entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of the prestigious Belarusian State University (BSU), in the year he was released, he graduated from it, and immediately became a graduate student of the Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Belarusian SSR.
The beginning of a career in the Soviet period
Having not worked for a long time as a “manes” in his native institute, Stanislav Shushkevich resigned as senior engineer at the Design Bureau of the Minsk Radio Plant. At that time, the plant was engaged in the development and manufacture of devices for physical research. An interesting episode is connected with this period, which Stanislav Shushkevich himself eagerly recalls. His biography briefly brought him not with anyone, but with the future official killer of US President Kennedy Lee Harvey Oswald.
The fact is that in 1959 he came to the USSR on a tourist visa and declared his desire to stay in the USSR. After the refusal, he defiantly tried to commit suicide. They went to meet him and determined the place of residence of Minsk, and sent him to work at a radio factory. Shushkevich, who was fluent in English, was instructed to study Russian with the American. According to his recollections, Oswald did not make any noticeable impression, looked lethargic and indifferent, and the locksmith was mediocre. However, this did not stop him from acquiring a young wife in Minsk, with whom he soon returned to the States.
Scientific career in the USSR
In 1961, Stanislav Shushkevich returned to the Belarusian State University, where in six years he has gone from a senior engineer to the head of a scientific laboratory. In 1967, he was appointed vice-rector for scientific work at the Minsk Radio Engineering Institute. According to the memoirs of Shushkevich himself, at the time of his new appointment he was non-partisan. This circumstance made it difficult for him to work in a new place, since all important decisions at the institute were taken at the party committee without his participation. Turning to the city party committee, Shushkevich demanded to find a solution to the problem. As a result, he was immediately accepted into the Communist Party, which allowed him to continue working without problems.
Since 1967, for two years, he has been working at the institute as vice-rector for science.
In 1969, Stanislav Shushkevich returned to state university, where in 7 years he became a professor and head of the department of nuclear physics. Since 1986, he has been working as vice-rector of the State University for Science.
The beginning of the political career
Before its beginning, Shushkevich Stanislav Stanislavovich was a famous Belarusian scientist, a corresponding member of the Belarusian Academy of Sciences, the author of several monographs, more than 150 articles and 50 inventions, and had various state awards.
In 1990, he was elected First Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of Belarus. After an attempted coup d'etat in the USSR in August 1991, he demanded the convocation of an extraordinary session of parliament, but was refused by its Chairman, Nikolai Dementey.
After the victory of Boris Yeltsin over the putschists, he was elected on August 26 and. about. Chairman of the Parliament, and on August 31 became its chairman. During his tenure, he supported reforms towards moving towards a free market economy.
Belovezhskaya Accords
According to Shushkevich’s recollections, he called in Boris Yeltsin to the former recreation center of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Belovezhskaya Pushcha in December 1991, not with the goal of destroying the USSR, but in an attempt to establish a mechanism for future economic relations between Belarus and Russia without the participation of the allied bodies, which Shushkevich thought in the future as purely decorative, something like a loose confederation. The idea to invite Leonid Kravchuk there also arose after coordinating the arrival of Yeltsin.
And so gathered in the forest three leaders of the Slavic republics inhabited by fraternal peoples that have a common root. According to Shushkevich, it was possible to reach agreements on economic relations between the three republics, but the question arose about whether it is necessary to apply for approval to President of the USSR Gorbachev. All three really did not want to do this, but no one dared to openly offer to renounce the union treaty. In the role of the oracle, who uttered a phrase that is crucial for all of us about recognizing the USSR as having ceased to exist, the approximate Yeltsin Gennady Burbulis acted. Shushkevich recalls that at that moment he "wildly envied Burbulis."
On December 8, Stanislav Shushkevich signed a document with Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk, according to which the Soviet Union ceased to exist and was transformed into the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
