Independence of Kazakhstan
The last republic leaves the USSR, on Jeltoqsan's anniversary
On 16 December 1991, exactly five years after Jeltoqsan began, Kazakhstan's Supreme Soviet passed its law on state independence, the last Soviet republic to do so. Five days later leaders of eleven republics signed the Alma-Ata Protocol creating the CIS, and on 25 December Gorbachev resigned.
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Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Whole world
- 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — 23 years earlier
- 1980 Smallpox declared eradicated — 11 years earlier
- 1981 AIDS first described — 10 years earlier
- 1997 Kyoto Protocol — 6 years later
- 2008 Global financial crisis — 17 years later
Europe
- 1989 Invention of the World Wide Web — 2 years earlier
- 1989 Fall of the Berlin Wall — 2 years earlier
- 1990 German reunification — 1 year earlier
- 1991–2001 Yugoslav Wars — same year
- 1992 Maastricht Treaty — 1 year later
Eastern Europe & Russia
- 1985–1991 Perestroika — 6 years earlier
- 1986 Chernobyl disaster — 5 years earlier
- 1989 Revolutions of 1989 — 2 years earlier
- 1991 Dissolution of the Soviet Union — same year
- 1994–1996 First Chechen War — 3 years later
Middle East
- 1989 9 April tragedy in Tbilisi — 2 years earlier
- 1990–1991 Gulf War — 1 year earlier
- 1990 Black January in Baku — 1 year earlier
- 1992–1993 War in Abkhazia — 1 year later
- 1993 Oslo Accords — 2 years later
Africa
- 1974 Lucy is discovered — 17 years earlier
- 1983–1985 The Ethiopian famine — 8 years earlier
- 1994 End of apartheid in South Africa — 3 years later
- 1998–2003 Second Congo War — 7 years later
- 2011 Independence of South Sudan — 20 years later
Americas
- 1969 Moon landing — 22 years earlier
- c. 1970 Mass deforestation of the Amazon begins — 21 years earlier
- 1983 ARPANET adopts TCP/IP — 8 years earlier
- 1990 Launch of the Hubble Space Telescope — 1 year earlier
- 2001 September 11 attacks — 10 years later
Oceania
- 1992 The Mabo decision — 1 year later
Alive at the time
- Nelson Mandela (aged 73)
- Neil Armstrong (aged 61)
- Mother Teresa (aged 81)
- Ronald Reagan (aged 80)
- Richard Nixon (aged 78)
- Edmund Hillary (aged 72)
- Jimmy Carter (aged 67)
- Fidel Castro (aged 65)
- Elizabeth II (aged 65)
- Gabriel García Márquez (aged 64)