by DoDo
Sun Sep 13th, 2009 at 05:29:46 AM EST
In the past week, some two decades old documents were released that covered behind-the-scenes talks of the British Foreign Office concerning German Reunification. While the release showed then British PM Margaret Thatcher as the big anti-German naysayer and the Foreign Office as a more reasonable acteur trying to mitigate the damage she wrought, Jerome a Paris highlighted how the British media focused in on a sidestory: then French President François Mitterrand egging on the Iron Lady behind the scenes.
Yesterday, The Times published another article based on confidential documents – this time, Soviet ones. The revelations are much more interesting than in the British document dump: they show that prior to the taking down of the Berlin Wall,
- Thatcher went as far as pleading the USSR off the record to ignore the official Western position and stop Reunification;
- Thatcher favoured the survival of the Warshaw Pact (take that, Václav Klaus!);
- Mitterrand communicated displeasure with the prospect of German Reunification towards the Soviets, too;
- Gorbachev's circle was both against the Warshaw Pact old guard and deeply suspicious of the motivatons behind the off-record messages of Western European leaders -- and thus initially more positive towards East German changes than either.
First, the source of the Soviet documents:
After Mr Gorbachev left office in 1991, copies of the state archives went to his personal foundation in Moscow. A few years ago Pavel Stroilov, a young writer doing research at the foundation, understood the huge historical significance of what they recorded. He copied more than 1,000 transcripts of all the Politburo discussions and brought them with him when he moved to London to continue his research.
Thatcher met Gorbachev in Moscow on 23 September 1989. The explosive off-record parts still got on record:
(The following part of the conversation is reproduced from memory.)
Thatcher: No to Reunification!
She then went fully explicit, telling the Soviets to ignore the West's public positions (and speaking for all the West):
The reunification of Germany is not in the interests of Britain and Western Europe. It might look different from public pronouncements, in official communiqué at Nato meetings, but it is not worth paying ones attention to it. We do not want a united Germany. This would have led to a change to post-war borders and we can not allow that because such development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.
Ah, she's into realpolitik?...
Thatcher: Long live the Warshaw Pact
And then comes the part that will be hard to swallow to Thatcher's Central European fans (Václav, Klaus I am looking at you!) – and she also acts as Bush's emissary in the process:
In the same way, a destabilisation of Eastern Europe and breakdown of the Warsaw Pact are also not in our interests. Of course, internal changes are happening in all Eastern European countries, somewhere they are deeper than in others. However, we would prefer if those processes were entirely internal, we would not interfere in them or push the de-communisation of Eastern Europe. I can say that the President of the United States is of the same position. He sent me a telegram to Tokyo in which he asked me directly to tell you that the United States would not do anything that might put at risk the security of the Soviet Union or perceived by the Soviet society as danger. I am fulfilling his request.
French displeasure
The French angle of the British document dump caused some storm. Objectively, the researchers releasing the documents, the small print at the end of the British press articles, and ET readers seemed all in agreement over an interpretation that Mitterrand was probably trying to get Thatcher to keep up public opposition, using her as a pawn to press Germany into more European-level cooperation. But, on one hand, Jérôme interpreted the release as another British attempt to drive a wedge between Germany and France; while Roland Dumas, Mitterrand's onetime foreign minister, went to tell German media that Mitterrand's more extreme Hitler rhetoric recorded by the British Foreign Office is an insult and false. On the other hand, three excerpts from the new Soviet document dump tells of similar overtures towards the Soviet leaders, and similar extreme rhetoric, all three via Jacques Attali.
The first is from the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, a senior analyst in the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee’s International Department, who was in charge of relations with Western European communist parties; 9 October 1989:
Zagladin traveled all around France and met with everybody - from Mitterrand to mayors. He has buried Moscow with records of his conversations (with gusto! There is nothing he likes better). They all say in unison - nobody wants a unified Germany. Attali (Mitterrand’s adviser) brought up the possibility of restoring a serious Soviet-French alliance, including military “integration,” but camouflaged as a joint use of armies to fight natural disasters.
The second document is a record of what Jacques Attali [the French President’s adviser] said to Vadim Zagladin [a senior Gorbachev aide] in a short meeting in Kiev; 6 December 1989; after welcoming the end of the Brezhnev Doctrine:
...the French leadership raised a question whether this meant that the USSR has made peace with the prospect of a united Germany and will not take any steps to prevent it? This has caused a fear approaching panic.
France by no means wants German re-unification, although it realises that in the end it is inevitable. Therefore, François Mitterrand took heart in that the USSR shared his position when he was assured of the latter by Gorbachev in the course their conversation.
The second parapgraph, of course, shows a much more reasonable position than Thatcher's. But the third document, which is mostly only paraphrased by The Times, contains the most out-there rhetoric:
In April 1990, five months after the wall came down, Mr Attali said that the spectre of reunification was causing nightmares among France’s politicians. The documents quote him telling Mr Mitterrand that he would “fly off to live on Mars” if this happened.
Gorbi's suspicions
The Soviets' view of what the West wants with the off-the-record communications is apparent from the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev; 9 October 1989:
All of Europe is raving about M.S. in Berlin. And everybody in Europe is whispering in our ear: it is good that the USSR has delicately expressed its stance against German reunification.
...Thatcher, when she asked to go off record during the conversation with M.S., expressed her views decisively against Germany's reunification. But, she said this is not something she can openly say at home or in Nato. In short, they want to prevent this with our hands.
What did Gorbachev think about this? He saw ulterior motives. From the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev; 3 November 1989 (eight days before the Wall was opened):
The West does not want German re-unification but wants to use us to prevent it, to cause a clash between us with the FRG [Federal Republic of Germany = West Germany] so as to rule out a possibility of a future ‘conspiracy’ between the USSR and Germany.
Take down the Wall
The quoted documents detail how Gorbi's inner circle thinks East German leader Erich Honecker et al are "arseholes", and see them as responsible for the turn of events. In these discussions, what I found most interesting is that the prospect of the Berlin Wall coming down is not an unthinkable but comes up twice:
From the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev; 9 October 1989:
On October 10, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany will have a Plenum… They might overthrow Erich. Otherwise, it will soon come to a storm on the Wall.
In the next quote comes the bombshell from the then Soviet foreign minister. From the diary of Anatoly Chernyaev; 3 November 1989 (eight days before the Wall was opened):
...Kryuchkov: Tomorrow 500,000 [people] will come out on the streets of Berlin and other cities…
Gorbachev:
Are you hoping that Krenz will stay?
We won’t be able to explain it to our people if we lose the GDR. However, we won’t be able to keep it afloat without the FRG.
Shevardnadze:
We’d better take down the Wall ourselves.
Kryuchkov:
Will be difficult for them if we take it down.
In retrospect, I find it interesting how Gorbachev thought about the effects of a resulting rushed Reunification:
They will be bought up whole… And when they reach world prices, living standards will fall immediately.
After the Wall came down
Later, Gorbachev's position changed from one ahead of events to one behind them: he thought Kohl and the West are rushing it, and proselytize. From the conversation between Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George Bush in their first one-to-one meeting in Malta; 2 December 1989:
I can’t accept when some American politicians say that the moves to prevent a split in Europe should be based on Western values. It looks as though if in the past we were accused in ‘exporting the revolution’, today it is about the export of American values.
Later in the conversation, the two discuss this at length. But before, on Kohl, Gorbachev said:
Our impression is that Mr Kohl is hurrying, fussing, acting irresponsibly, not approaching things seriously. Wouldn’t it just be possible that the theme of re-unification be exploited for electioneering, that momentum would become more important than strategic factors. Talking of which, there is a difference in opinion on this question in the FRG, both within the governing coalition and Social Democrats. However, we must make it clear to everyone that certain actions can harm positive processes and, moreover, put under question very important and serious issues, including trust to the FRG government.
I think he was right... I think Kohl was riding the popular emotions by rushing Reunification ahead of the 1990 elections which his party won. Bush tried to defend Kohl, still agreeing partly:
I think that Helmut Kohl is largely driven by emotions in reaction to the developments. The same could be said about [Hans-Dietrich] Genscher. Yes, in the three point programme one can sense some influence of electioneering. However this wave of emotion must be considered.
It also seems that a remilitarisation of Germany was feared not only in London and Paris. From a discussion on the German question held at the Kremlin; January 26 1990:
Ryzhkov:
We should be realistic. We can not stop this process. All we can do is chose our tactics because we will not be able to preserve the GDR. All barriers have been destroyed. The country’s economy is imploding. All state institutions are dissolved. We can not hope to preserve the GDR. However, a confederation is a different thing and we must propose our condition for a confederation. It is not right to be leaving [all initiative] to Kohl. If we do this then in 20 or 30 years Germany will start another world war.
