Early in December 1991, in a national referendum called by the parliament in Kiev four months earlier, the Ukrainian people voted to declare independence from the USSR, and Mikhail Gorbachev lost the battle to hold together the union of the twelve remaining Soviet republics. Returned briefly to his position as head of state after a failed reactionary coup in August, he had been forced to watch as Russian president Boris Yeltsin stripped him of his powers and announced that he was suspending the activities of the Communist Party. On Christmas Day, Gorbachev appeared on television to deliver an
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