Stanislav Shushkevich, the first president of independent Belarus, passed away at the age of 87. In 1991 he signed the Belovezhskoe Agreement on the Belarusian side, which ended the existence of the USSR. This was reported to Euroradio by his wife Irina.
"On the night of May 4, Stanislav Shushkevich, the first leader of the independent republic of Belarus, died in Minsk," the report said.
It was noted that Shushkevich's health deteriorated in April this year after a coronavirus. For some time he was in intensive care.
Stanislav Shushkevich is the son of a repressed Belarusian writer. He was a famous Belarusian scientist. He was People's deputy of the USSR (since 1989), People's deputy of the BSSR (since 1990), first deputy chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Belarus. After the August putsch of 1991, he headed the Belarusian parliament.
Stanislav Shushkevich was one of the participants of Belovezh Agreements that buried the USSR in December of 1991. He was dismissed from the post of the Chairman of Verkhovna Rada at the beginning of 1994. He participated in presidential elections in 1994 but did not come up to the second round. In 1995 was again elected to the Supreme Rada of Belarus and was a member of the "Civic Action" faction.
In autumn 1996 he signed the application to the Constitutional Court to impeach Alexander Lukashenko. He refused to enter the House of Representatives and participated in the activity of the Supreme Rada, the powers of which ended in 2001.
For a long time, he headed the Belarusian Social Democratic Community (since 2018, honorary chairman). He boldly criticized Lukashenko's policies.
The new history textbook for 11th graders does not mention the only Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alekseevich and the signatory of the "Belovezhskaya Pushcha agreements" Stanislav Shushkevich once.