Treaty on the Creation of the USSR on 30 December 1922 by a conference of delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR. The Treaty and the Declaration were confirmed by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations Mikhail Kalinin, Mikhail Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze and Grigory Petrovsky, Aleksandr Chervyakov respectively on December 30, 1922. The treaty provided flexibility to admit new members. Therefore, by 1940 the Soviet Union grew from the founding four republics to 15 republics. On 8 December 1991, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian Presidents signed the Belavezha Accords. The agreement declared
Treaty on the Creation of the USSR Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic of the RSFSR ceased to exist, and its territory was divided between the new Kazakh and Kirghiz SSRs. In a prelude to World War II, several new republics were created prior to the German invasion of USSR in 1941. The first was the Karelo-Finnish SSR, which on 31 March 1940 was elevated to a union republic from the Karelian ASSR, previously part of the RSFSR. After the annexation of Baltic states, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were transformed into the Lithuanian SSR (July 13), Latvian SSR (July 21) and Estonian SSR (also July 21), and were formally