As a result of the 1991 referendum. Most of the population in the Central Asian republics, Belarus, Ukraine and Azerbadyzhana voted to retain the USSR. The Soviet Union broke up artificially (confluence of two factors).
1. The republican authorities wanted to take power into their own hands and ignored the will of its people.
2. Moscow did not disturb them. Yeltsin sought to deprive the government of Gorbachev. Gorbachev was the Soviet leader. It would not be the Soviet Union would not be the Soviet President Gorbachev. Yeltsin remained the president of Russia. So Yeltsin stimulated republican authorities to leave the Soviet Union. Personal interests of a narrow group of people destroyed the Soviet Union.