19. Signing the Belavezha Accords. Pen touches paper – and abracadabra! The Soviet Union disappears. 19. © NOVOSTI/AFP/Getty Images. Yet over decades and centuries the web of meaning unravels and a new web is spun in its place. To study history means to watch the spinning and unravelling of these webs, and to realise that what seems to people in one age the most important thing in life becomes utterly meaningless to their descendants.
