When was the 1991 Soviet Union referendum held?
The 1991 Soviet Union referendum was held on the 17th of March 1991. It was the only national referendum in the entire history of the Soviet Union.
Questions about 1991 Soviet Union referendum
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What did the 1991 Soviet Union referendum ask voters?
Voters were asked whether they considered it necessary to preserve the USSR as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedoms of people of any ethnicity would be fully guaranteed. The answer options were yes or no.
Which Soviet republics boycotted the 1991 referendum?
Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Moldova boycotted the referendum at the official level. However, some autonomous regions within Georgia and Moldova, including Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Gagauzia, held the vote anyway.
What percentage of voters approved the 1991 Soviet Union referendum question?
Nearly 80 percent of voters in the nine participating republics approved the question, on a turnout of 80 percent across those republics.
Why did the New Union Treaty never get signed after the 1991 referendum?
An attempted coup by Communist Party hardliners in August 1991 prevented the signing, which had been scheduled for the day after the coup began. Although the coup failed, it destroyed confidence in Gorbachev's central government and set off a wave of independence referendums across the republics.
What happened to the Soviet Union after the 1991 referendum approved its preservation?
Despite the vote, the USSR dissolved on the 26th of December 1991, less than nine months after the referendum. Individual republics held their own independence votes, and Ukraine's the 1st of December 1991 referendum, in which 92 percent voted for independence, made the dissolution effectively irreversible.