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
USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928) society. When such communities were discovered, the monastics could sometimes be immediately executed. Future church leaders were in these communities and they may have been instrumental in preserving monasticism in the USSR. Tikhon died in 1925. He was replaced in 1927 by Metropolitan Sergii who gave unqualified loyalty to the state. The Church, however, continued to teach that Orthodoxy was incompatible with Marxism. This was contrasted by many other religious groups in the country that tried to re-affirm how they were compatible with the state ideology when they were put under attack. The Patriarchal church lost its ability to train