When the United Nations was formed in 1945, it included two rather interesting founder members:
the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
As constituent parts of the Soviet Union, neither was an independent state.
More to the point, their inclusion gave the Soviet Union - a single country - three separate seats in the new organization.
In this video, I'm going to look at how this happened, what it meant in real terms,
and how this decision would have interesting effects almost half a century later.
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Hello. My name is James Ker-Lindsay.
Welcome to Independent Thinking.
A channel dedicated to international relations, statehood, independence and the origins of countries.
While we think of membership of the United Nations as the ultimate symbol of independent statehood,
this hasn't always been strictly the case.
While every current member is regarded as a separate sovereign country, there was in fact a time
when some members weren't actually fully independent states.
In particular, two countries standout: Belarus and Ukraine.
Despite the fact that they were part of the Soviet Union, they nevertheless became founder members
of the United Nations and have held their own seats in the organizations since it was founded, in 1945.
So how did this happen?
The idea for the United Nations first emerged in 1941.
The idea was to create a new world body that would replace the defunct League of Nations.
In 1944 the first major planning for the United Nations took place at a conference held
in Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington DC.
This was followed by a meeting of the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and the United Kingdom
- Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill - at the Crimean resort of Yalta, between 4-11 February 1945.
Fearing that a new body would be dominated by countries aligned to the United States,
Stalin wanted each of the Soviet Union's 16 constituent republics to be given a separate seat in the new body.
However, this was rejected by the United States and Britain.
As they saw it, this would give the Soviet Union and its allies a disproportionately large say
in the new organization.
Moreover, they argued that, as the Soviet republics did not exist as separate entities in their own rights,
they shouldn't be allowed a separate seats each in the body.
Just to make the point clear, the United States also countered that if the Soviet Union was to be allowed
to have all 16 republics in the organization then it should be allowed to have all the states there as well.
Although this helped to convince Stalin to back down from the idea of having every Republic represented,
the Soviet Union nevertheless had a couple of further arguments in its favour.
It's not perhaps generally realized that they were in fact two other founder members of the United Nations
that weren't independent states at the time: India and the Philippines.
India, which gained independence in 1947, was still a British colony at the time.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth that the Philippines wouldn't gain independence from the United States
until July 1946.
In this regard, both could be seen as proxy votes for London and Washington respectively.
In addition, the USSR argued that the inclusion of the British dominions
- Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa - although fully self-governing in domestic and
foreign policy effectively gave the United Kingdom key extra votes in the United Nations.
The leaders therefore reached a compromise.
In addition to the seat given to the Soviet Union, which would also be a veto-wielding permanent member
of the new Security Council, it was decided that two further seats would be given to the country.
These would go to the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
This was confirmed when the representatives of 46 nations met in San Francisco, from April to June 1945,
to shape the final form of the United Nations.
The two Soviet republics, alongside Denmark and Argentina, were invited to join the discussions.
As a result, they became founder members of the organization when the UN Charter was signed
on 26 June 1945.
But what did this membership mean in real terms?
Most obviously, it gave the Soviet Union three seats - and therefore three votes - in the General Assembly;
the main decision-making body of the UN.
However, the value of this needs to be put in perspective.
While this represented about six percent of the votes when the UN was formed and had 51 original members,
it soon became watered down as the UN expanded.
By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, in December 1991, when the UN had 166 members these,
three seats represented just 1.8 percent of the entire vote. Hardly enough to swing any outcome.
Where it was potentially more significant was in the Security Council.
Interestingly, both Byelorussia and Ukraine did in fact serve terms on the Council.
Ukraine was one of the six non-permanent members of the Council in 1947 and 1948.
Then, following the expansion of the Security Council to ten non-permanent members, in 1966,
both countries held seats on the Council.
Byelorussia in 1974 and 1975, and Ukraine in 1984 and 1985.
But even in the Security Council, their membership made little real difference.
After all, the USSR was a veto-wielding permanent member of the Council .
It could unilaterally block anything that it didn't like.
Likewise, having an extra vote in the Council wouldn't make any difference if the Western powers
- the United States, Britain and France - wished to stand in the way of a particular Soviet resolution.
Likewise, the presence of Belarus and Ukraine in other UN bodies made little discernible difference.
While they both joined many of the bodies and institutions of the UN
- including UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency,
but interestingly not the IMF or the World Bank - they appeared to play little direct part.
When their representatives spoke, they simply followed the Soviet line.
All of this reflected the fact that the decision to include them both was merely a political decision
taken to appease the Soviet Union.
Except in some rather limited ways, neither of them really had any independent international presence
outside of the United Nations and some limited relations with other Eastern European countries.
Indeed, Moscow was clear that their UN status shouldn't be confused with statehood in any real sense.
Of course, the decision to include Belorussia and Ukraine as members would have major implications when,
half a century later, the Soviet Union began to disintegrate.
On 19 August 1991, a coup was launched against the Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev.
Although unsuccessful, this paved the way for the final unraveling of the Soviet Union.
On 24 August, Ukraine declared independence.
That same day, the representative the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic informed the UN Secretary-General
that the country's new name would be Ukraine.
The next day, the Belarussian Soviet Socialist Republic followed suit and declared independence,
informing the UN Secretary General of its new name a month later, on 19 September.
However, despite their declarations of independence, and their changed status at the UN,
the two countries didn't formally break from the Soviet Union until later in the year.
In late December, the Soviet Union finally came to an end when Russia, the largest of the Soviet republics,
declared independence.
With the agreement of the other republics, it now inherited the Soviet Union's membership at the UN,
including its permanent seat on the Security Council;
a decision that was conveyed to the UN Secretary General on 24 December 1991.
Six weeks later, on 6 February 1992, the representative of Ukraine wrote to the UN Secretary-General,
stating that as one of the 'founding members of the UN', the country reaffirmed its obligations under the Charter.
This left no doubt about how it saw itself.
Although it was a new country, it was nevertheless a founder member of the United Nations.
This was confirmed by the Organization later that year.
In response to a request from the General Assembly,
which was trying to work out the assessment of membership fees from the new members,
the UN's legal Council endorsed the position of the two countries.
As he stated, the constitutional changes that had taken place could not transform them automatically
into new members of the UN.
As he stated, Belarus and Ukraine 'are and remain, consequently, original members of the United Nations
within the purview of article 3 of the Charter and they are correctly listed as members since 1945
in the official records of the organization.'
So, formally the UN Charter states that membership is only open to states.
However, as I've shown, this hasn't always been strictly true.
Neither the Belarusian nor the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics could be regarded as states
under the strict understanding of the term.
They clearly didn't meet the terms for statehood inasmuch as they obviously didn't
exercise independent governance.
Nor did they have the genuine capacity to enter into relations with other states
- even though, technically speaking, Article 74 of the constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic
in fact permitted this.
Of course, one could perhaps argue that this also reflects a slightly different understanding of statehood
at the time the UN was created.
After all, both India and the Philippines were also founder members of the UN,
despite the fact that they hadn't achieved independence at the time.
Indeed, the prevailing legal view is that these countries too were special cases of UN membership in 1945.
However, balanced against this, it's also worth considering that India and the Philippines
were heading towards statehood.
Both became independent within three years of the signing of the UN Charter.
This wasn't the case with the Soviet republics.
Instead, the decision to admit the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republics into United Nations
was a curious and deliberate anomaly.
It was a political decision designed to reflect the great power dynamics of the day.
So, this is how Belarus and Ukraine are rightly regarded as founder members of the United Nations in 1945,
even though they didn't become independent countries until 1991.
And this is also how the Soviet Union - as a single state - managed to secure three separate seats
at the United Nations.
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Thanks so much for watching and see you again soon.
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