ABSTRACT
During the period of the Cold War confrontation both the United States and the Soviet Union saw tight central control over nuclear weapons as essential. In late 1990, Western and Soviet academics were already discussing the consequences of social and political disintegration in the Soviet Union for nuclear weapons safety. During the second half of 1991, deep concerns about the security and safety of nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union began to surface publicly in the United States. Tactical nuclear weapons (TNF) were deployed widely throughout the Soviet Union. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan all had TNF on their territories. When the Soviet Union was finally dissolved and the CIS was established at the end of 1991, a separate agreement on strategic forces was signed on 31 December 1991 in Minsk which specified that all nuclear weapons would remain under a joint command based in Moscow.
