effect of alarmist reports from Soviet agencies abroad and television coverage of events in his diary: "Today in Dresden-20,000 demonstrate. Yesterday there was a demonstration in Leipzig. Information is reaching us that, in the presence of Gorbachev, people will storm the Wall. Awful scenes when a special train [with East German refugees] passed from Prague to the GDR via Dresden. West German television shot everything and now is broadcasting it."80 Other Soviet observers also admit that West German television reports from Prague about the refugees had "a shattering effect" on them.81 According to Lévesque, the situation in Eastern Europe really began to spin out of control with the events. in Poland in August 1989. But it was the East German refugee crisis, the demonstrations throughout the GDR, and the unexpected collapse of the Berlin Wall that produced such an acceleration of events that the Soviet leadership lost any chance to contain them.82 Chernyaev had no illusions about the course of events. "A total dismantling of socialism as a world phenomenon has been taking place. This may be inevitable and good. For this is a reunification of mankind on the basis of common sense. And a common fellow from Stavropol [Gorbachev] set this process in motion."83 This last line perhaps hints at a most interesting phenomenon: the transformation of perceptions and ideological orientation of communist apparatchiks in the midst of revolutionary change. Whatever his prior illusions, Gorbachev decided-like Imre Nagy in Hungary in 1956 and Alexander Dubček in Czechoslovakia in 1968— to support the peaceful revolutions that overcame the Cold War in Europe. In Berlin-Treptow, at the statue of the Soviet soldier commemorating "liberation," the Soviet leader recited the poem by Fedor Tyutchev: The oracle of our times has proclaimed: In the words of Zelikow and Rice, "it was certainly a strange way for the leader of the Soviet Union to warn the FRG" to respect the right of the GDR to exist. 85 But euphoria over witnessing "democratic revolution" in the GDR led to a remarkable degree of wishful thinking on Gorbachev's part about the nature of processes in East Germany and elsewhere in East-Central Europe. Once Erich Honecker was finally ousted by the SED Politburo, the new GDR leader, Egon Krenz, met with Gorbachev on 1 November to discuss the GDR's future. When Krenz tested the Soviet leader on his attitude toward Germany's reunification, Gorbachev responded that, in his opinion, it would be explosive and most Western leaders supported "the preservation of the realities of the postwar period, including the existence of two German states."86 He had doubts about the US, but Shakhnazarov, who was present, interjected that American remarks in favor of German reunification were probably made for domestic consumption. In retrospect, it is obvious that the Soviet leader was very much impressed by the opinions of Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr, who at that time seemed to strongly believe that "liquidation of the republic [the GDR] would have been a bust for the Social Democrats."'87 Gorbachev, hobbled by his own economic crisis at home, was in no position to bankroll the GDR. He was visibly shocked to learn that the GDR owed the West $26.5 billion and had a $12.1 billion budget deficit for 1989. "Astonished, Comrade Gorbachev asked whether these numbers were exact. He had not imagined the situation to be so precarious."88 He then admitted that for the GDR, like for Hungary and Poland, there was no way to survive economically without turning to the West. "Today some people criticize us: they say, what is the Soviet Union doing allowing Poland and Hungary to 'sail' to the West [?] But, Gorbachev said, "we cannot take Poland on our balance sheet. Poland... still owes almost $50 billion ... You [Krenz] need to take this into account in your relationship with the FRG.” 89 Gorbachev and Krenz discussed a detailed plan for the GDR. But the Soviet leader, as was his policy and style, refrained from any direct advice or firm commitments. According to the East German record, Krenz told Gorbachev that travel laws would be revised to let East Germans travel (without money) to the West. According to the Soviet record of the meeting, Krenz said: "We have already taken a number of steps. First of all, we gave orders to the border troops not to use weapons at the border, except in cases of direct attacks on the soldiers. Second, in the Politburo we adopted a draft of the Law on Foreign Travel at the Politburo. We will present it for a public discussion, and we plan to pass it in the [Volkskammer] even before Christmas." The issue of interBerlin border control had always been a primary concern of the Soviet leadership during the Cold War, and was, in 1958-61, the cause of a grave East-West confrontation. But this time, remarkably, Gorbachev did not even raise it, implying perhaps an assumption that the GDR leadership would respect the regime of the Berlin Wall. When the Soviet ambassador to the GDR asked Moscow what to do, Shevardnadze's deputy instructed him not to interfere in the discussion concerning the new travel laws and to consider them as sovereign decisions of the GDR.90 By leaving this crucial matter to the chaotic and disorganized SED establishment, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze took a huge gamble and indeed, the opening of the Berlin Wall turned out, post facto, to be an inadvertent, but understandable consequence of this decision. During this period, the United States turned out to be more conscious of geopolitics than Gorbachev and his people. Early in 1989, for instance, Henry Kissinger brought to Moscow a scheme for the preservation of stability in East-Central Europe through mutual restraint. Gorbachev, however, was not interested. Instead of global status quo, his goal was US-Soviet cooperation in changing the world." At the Malta summit, Bush Administration officials were jubilant when Gorbachev openly recognized the American role in Europe and assured them that the Soviets "don't want bridgeheads in Cuba and Central America." "2 As this global historical change occurred, American strategists found it hard to believe that the Cold War was really over without a single shot. They could not quite grasp how the Soviets, who had allegedly sought in the late 1970s to threaten the Persian Gulf and support left-wing movements in Africa, Central America, and Southeast and Southwest Asia, might now renounce their imperial ambitions in 1989. Lingering doubts prevailed, even as the Soviet Union, much against its traditional interests, joined the United States in a coalition against Saddam Hussein's Iraq a year later. Speaking to his advisers, Bush vowed not to "overlook the Soviet desire for access to warm water ports. 993 It was one of ironies of 1989 as a milestone of international history that, as the Soviet leadership was burying Stalin's geopolitical legacy, the US national security elite successfully implemented the assumptions of "realism" in building a strong and unified Europe under the American leadership. In Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria, millions of people marched for freedom and democracy and thought they were making history. They were making it indeed. But students of this history ten years later should not forget the sense of extreme uncertainty that permeated all the actions of the democratic "opposition" along with all the motley disparate forces that joined it. The tensions in Eastern Europe were underscored by the 4 June Chinese crackdown against democratic students in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The macabre finale of Ceauşescu's trial and death in Romania came as the long-awaited shot from the rifle that hung on the wall of East-Central European house throughout much of the summer and fall of 1989. Yet, the uncertainty was not tinged with fear. Instead of making people numb, cautious and passive, it mobilized them in feverish excitement and made them pry open the doors and traps that for decades seemed to be locked from inside, mined and protected. It probably would not have made much of a difference to mass democratic mobilization in Eastern Europe if Moscow had interfered politically and, instead of sitting on its hands, had deployed unusually deft statecraft to try to help transform the unpopular political regimes. During the German refugee crisis, the Warsaw Pact virtually ceased to exist as an alliance, and after 12 November, as a perceptive scholar wrote, "Eastern Europe, in its entirety, [had] finally hurled itself through the Berlin Wall." 94 Would it have been possible to stem the tide after October? There was no means to do so without major bloodshed, and according to the analyses done by liberal minded Moscow experts in early 1989, the outcome would have been disastrous for Gorbachev's efforts to promote reforms at home and peace in the world. Even Stalin had spent several years stuffing the genie of East-Central European nationalism and drive for independence into the sealed communist bottle. Once the genie was liberated again in every country-from Poland to Bulgaria-nothing less than a massive and bloody use of force could have undone or stopped the process. Some scholars write that Gorbachev (had history given him more time) would have preserved the Warsaw Treaty by integrating into it non-communist governments, beginning with Poland. Lévesque, for instance, concludes that Gorbachev's "project" in Eastern Europe "was far from being devoid of realism" and that its prospects "were excellent in the summer of 1989." 95 I disagree. While it is unimaginable that the flood of popular revolutions in EastCentral Europe would have occurred without Gorbachev and "perestroika" in the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union (or its successor, Russia) never could have re-consolidated the region on a new, non-totalitarian, non-coercive basis. The non-communist Polish government, for instance, might have stayed for tactical reasons in the alliance with the Soviet Union for a year or two. But democratic politics and the historic national sentiments of the vast majority of Polish people pushed inexorably for a reorientation of the country towards economic, cultural, political, and ultimately military alliance with the West. The same went for the other East European countries. And, as the story of NATO expansion revealed, the US polity could not resist the idea of incorporating the area into its sphere of responsibility. Therefore one must search in vain for signs of "realist" designs in Gorbachev's non-policy towards Eastern Europe. There were none. "The Soviet factor,” nevertheless, proved to be a crucial factor in the success of the peaceful revolutions in Eastern Europe and in the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Gorbachev leadership adhered to the illusory belief in "socialism with human face" as a possible third option for Eastern Europe, between old style communism and capitalism. And it was categorically against any direct interference, either by military or non-military means, lest it compromise Gorbachev's global project of a new world order based on his "new thinking." One day, when the Central and East Europeans overcome their postcommunist hangover, and the political bickering between former reformed communists and former dissidents becomes history, memorials may be erected to remember the "annus mirabilis" of 1989. And perhaps, among the various figures on the bas-relief frieze, there might be a place for Gorbachev, the inadvertent liberator. DOCUMENTS [Editor's Note: Excerpts from the notes of Anatoly Chernyaev are printed here as a courtesy with permission of their author. Originals and complete transcriptions are stored at the Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation, fond 2, opis 2. We are very thankful to Mr. Chernyaev for his generosity and remarkable addition to our understanding of the Soviet role in the end of the Cold War. Copyright on the documents belongs to Mr. Chernyaev. These are excerpts from the forthcoming book edited by Vladislav Zubok, Thomas Blanton, and Svetlana Savranskaya, in the National Security Archive series published by Central European University Press entitled "Masterpiece of History: Gorbachev's 'New Thinking' and the Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe."] DOCUMENT No. 1 Georgy Shakhnazarov's Preparatory Notes for Mikhail Gorbachev for the Meeting of the Politburo, 6 October 1988 Mikhail Sergeevich! Maybe you will find these thoughts useful. Today we are discussing the results of our talks with the leaders or prominent figures from a number of socialist countries [Laotian Prime Minister Kaysone] K. Phomvihan, Wo Thi Khong, [East German leader] E[rich] Honecker, [Romanian leader] N[icolae] Ceaucescu, [former Polish Leader Eduard] Gierek. Now [Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party leader Jambyn] Batmunkh is asking for a meeting. Each country has its unique situation and we would be correct not to approach them across-the-board [chokhom]; we are seeking to figure out the specifics of each of them, and to build our policy on the basis of such an analysis. At the same time today's exchange and, broadly speaking, everything that we know, all the information we receive, encourages us to take a multi-faceted evaluation of the situation in the socialist commonwealth. Notwithstanding all their differences and nuances, there are multiple signs that some similar problems are increasingly plaguing the fraternal countries. The very similarity of symptoms of the disease testifies to the fact that its catalyst [vozbudite!] is not some kind of a malignant germ that has managed to penetrate their lowered defenses, but some factors rooted in the very economic and political model of socialism as it had evolved over here, and had been transferred with insignificant modifications to the soil of the countries who had embarked on the path of socialism in the post-war period. We have already laid bare weaknesses of this model and are beginning to remove them in a systematic way. This is actually the super-task of perestroika-to give socialism a new quality. A number of countries have followed us and began, even ahead of us, the process of deep reforms. Some of them, the GDR [East Germany], Romania, the KPDR [North Korea] still do not admit its necessity, but they do it rather for political reasons, because their current political leadership does not want to change anything. In reality all of them need changes, although we do not tell them this publicly to avoid criticism for trying to impose our perestroika on our friends. But the fact is that obvious signs of a crisis require radical reforms everywhere in the socialist world. And subjective factors play a huge role. For instance, in more than backward Laos, Phomvihan is acting skillfully, and there are some good results. But those who stubbornly turn a deaf ear to the call of the time are driving the malaise ever deeper and aggravate its manifestations in the future. And this concerns us in a direct way. Although we laid aside our rights of "senior brother" in the socialist world, we cannot renounce the role of a leader, the role that will always objectively belong to the Soviet Union as the most powerful socialist country, the motherland of the October Revolution. When it came to a crisis in any of them, we had to come to rescue at the cost of huge material, political and even human sacrifices. We should clearly see, moreover, that in the future any possibility to "put out" crisis situations by military means must be fully excluded. Even the old leadership seemed to have already realized this, at least with regard to Poland. Now we must reflect on how we will act if one or even several countries become bankrupt simultaneously? This is [a] realistic prospect, for some of them are on the brink of monetary insolvency (Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Vietnam, Cuba, GDR). Even Czechoslovakia, which has so far stayed afloat, now has rapidly rising external debt. What shall we do if social instability that is now taking an increasingly threatening character in Hungary will coincide with another round of trouble-making in Poland, demonstrations of "Charter 77" in Czechoslovakia, etc.? In other words, do we have a plan in case of a crisis that might encompass the entire socialist world or a large part of it? We are worried about this. When we receive from time to time alarmist cables we do what we can, but all this is at best like applying lotion to sores, not a systematic, thoughtful strategy for treatment of the disease, not to mention preventive measures. It is high time to discuss these issues at the Politburo in the presence of experts. We should not bury our head in the sand like an ostrich, but we should look into the future with open eyes and ask ourselves the sharpest questions: Could the socialist countries come out of the pre-crisis situation without Western assistance? What price will they have to pay for this assistance? To what extent should we encourage such a course of events or put up with it? To what degree are we interested in further presence of Soviet troops on the territory of a number of allied countries (excluding the GDR)? We should assign to the newly-established CC International Commission [the task of preparing materials for this discussion.] This is a huge problem, in scope as well as in significance, we need to tackle it continuously, but the first exchange should take place as early as late December [1988]-early January 1989. There will be a working conference of the Party leadership of the commonwealth in Prague in February, and this gives us a chance to share some of our conclusions with our friends. They are already expecting it, although each of them, of course, sees the situation from "his own angle." [Source: Published in G. Kh. Zhakhnazarov, Tsena prozreniia [The Price of Enlightenment]. Translated by Vladislav Zubok (National Security Archive).] DOCUMENT No. 2 Excerpt from Anatoly Chernyaev's Diary, 28 October 1988 Kohl met one-on-one with Gorbachev (plus me and Horst Teltschik, assistant to the Chancellor). And when I saw this striving at the highest level to speak as one human being to another human being (mutually), I felt physically that we were entering a new world, where class struggle, ideology, and, in general, polarity and enmity are no longer decisive. And something all-human is taking the upper hand. And then I came to realize how brave and farsighted M.S [Gorbachev] is. He declared a "new thinking" "without any theoretical preparation" and began to act according to common sense. His ideas are: freedom of choice, mutual respect of each other's values, balance of interest, renunciation of force in politics, all-European house, liquidation of nuclear armaments etc. All this, each by itself, is not original or new. What is new is that a person who came out of Soviet Marxism-Leninism, Soviet society conditioned from top to bottom by Stalinism— began to carry out these ideas with all earnestness and sincerity when he became the head of state. No wonder that the world is stunned and full of admiration. And our public still cannot appreciate that he has already transferred all of them from one state to another... [Source: Anatoly Chernyaev, 1991: The Diary of an Assistant to the President of the USSR (Moscow: TERRA, 1997). Translated from Russian by Vladislav Zubok (National Security Archive).] DOCUMENT No. 3 Anatoly Chernyaev's Notes from the Politburo Session, 21 January 1989 Communist Party of the Soviet Union Central Committee 21 January 1989 Gorbachev is speaking about the Trilateral Commission, with which he met ([former US Secretary of State Henry A.] Kissinger, [former French President Valéry] Giscard d'Estaing, [former Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro] Nakasone). It [the commission] is interested in everything that is going on, especially in our country. It is working on all issues of European world policy. I would emphasize two issues. First is how are you-meaning we, the Soviet Union— going to integrate into the world economy? These issues are [being] considered in the Trilateral Commission. If you are going to integrate, we should be ready for it, they said to me. Giscard told me directly that for us (the USSR) this problem would be extremely difficult, but for them as well. Second issue. They are coming to the conclusion that the biggest fights of perestroika are still ahead of us. And in the international sphere the main problems for us will emerge in the Third World. They think that the West "lets the Third World live," and the Third World, in turn, “lets the West live." But how are we going to deal with the Third World? They believe that in 10-20 years we all will have to deal with a federation of states named Europe. Kisa [Kissinger] just shrugged at this statement by Giscard, and asked me a direct question: How are you going to react if Eastern Europe wants to join the E[uropean] C[ommission]? It is not an accident that they asked me about it. They know that our friends are already knocking on the door. And we should also look at what processes are going on there now-the economic and the political-and where they are drifting. What is going on in Hungary, for example? An opposition party led by [Miklos] Nemeth has emerged there. Hungary is on the eve of a serious choice. Of course, it will be different. And I think that every country should have, and has, its own face. And we will continue to be friends, because the socialist basis will be preserved in all of them. The roads of our development will be very diverse, while we will preserve our commonality. We need a mechanism that will ensure our mutual understanding and interaction. There will be a lot of political, economic, and military-political questions. We should consider them in the Central Committee's Commission on Eastern Europe. We should undertake situational analysis with scholars. For example, how would we react if Hungary left for the EC? Comrades, we are on the eve of very serious things. Because we cannot give them more than we are giving them now. And they need new technologies. If we do not deal with that, there will be a split, and they will run away. And then there is the question of what we should present to the working groups of the leaders of the socialist countries. By the way, let the Commission give us a substantiated answer whether we need this meeting at all. Before it, we should work out what we can give to our friends, and compare it with what the West can give them. The answer to this question, I am sure, lies with our perestroika, with its success. And we should try to involve our friends, to get them interested in our economic reforms. Let [Aleksandr] Yakovlev, with scholars, look at it. We are facing a serious problem there. The peoples of those countries will ask: what about the C[ommunist] P[arty of the] S[oviet] U[nion], what kind of leash will it use to keep our countries in line? They simply do not know that if they pulled this leash harder, it would break. It is time to transfer our relations to the forms that we practice in our relationship with China, but we can get to such forms only via the market, and, of course, via technological and scientific developments in our own country. In that case, we would break the old rule that we keep them attached to us only by means of energy resources. At the same time, we cannot just tell them that we would cut the deliveries. That would be a betrayal. Kisa hinted at the idea of a USSR-US condominium over Europe. He was hinting that Japan, Germany, Spain, and South Korea were on the rise, and so, let us make an agreement so that the "Europeans do not misbehave." We should work on this range of issues also, but in such a way that it would not leak, because in Europe they are most afraid of that what they understand the Reykjavik summit means. And if you remember, in Reykjavik they saw an effort at conspiracy between the USSR and the USA over Europe. My impression from the meeting with the Trilateral Commission is the following: they understood in the West that the world needs a peaceful breathing spell from the arms race, from the nuclear psychosis, as much as we need it. However, we need to know it all in detail in order not to make mistakes. They want to channel the processes in such a way as to limit as much as possible our influence on the world situation, they are trying to seize the initiative from us, present criteria of trust as tests: if the Soviet Union would not want to agree to something, we would act in a way to gain more points. That is why we have to keep the initiative. This is our main advantage. [Source: Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation (Moscow), f. 2, op. 2. Translated by Svetlana Savranskaya (National Security Archive).] DOCUMENT No. 4 Excerpt from Anatoly Chernyaev's Diary, 2 May 1989 Inside me, depression and alarm are growing, the sense of crisis of the Gorbachevian idea. He is prepared to go far. But what does it mean? His favorite catchword is "unpredictability." And most likely we will come to a collapse of the state and something like chaos. He feels that he is losing the levers of power irreversibly, and this realization prevents him from "going far." For this reason he holds to conventional methods but acts with "velvet gloves." He has no concept of where we are going. His declaration about socialist values, the ideals of October, as he begins to tick them off, sound like irony to the cognoscenti. Behind them-emptiness. [Source: Published in Anatoly Chernyaev, 1991: The Diary of an Assistant to the President of the USSR (Moscow: TERRA, 1997). Translated by Vladislav Zubok (National Security Archive).] DOCUMENT No. 5 Excerpt From the Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev, 5 October 1989 M.S. [Gorbachev] is flying to the GDR [to celebrate] its 40th anniversary. He is very reluctant. Called me two times. Today [he called and said]: I polished the text (of the speech) to the last letter-you know, they will scrutinize it under a microscope... I will not say a word in support of [East German leader Erich] Honecker. But I will support the Republic and the Revolution. Today in Dresden-20,000 demonstrate. Yesterday there was a demonstration in Leipzig. Information is coming in that in the presence of Gorbachev people will storm the Wall. Awful scenes when a special train [with East German refugees] passed from Prague to the GDR via Dresden. West German television shot everything and now is broadcasting this all over the GDR. All Western media are full of articles about German reunification. Tomorrow the congress of the H[ungarian] S[ocialist] W[orkers'] P[arty] will announce the self-liquidation of "socialist PRH" [People's Republic of Hungary]. Not to mention Poland: the P[olish] U[nited] W[orkers'] P[arty] not only lost power-it will hardly survive till its next congress in February. In a word, the total dismantling of socialism as a world phenomenon has been proceeding...Perhaps it is inevitable and good...For this is a reunification of mankind on the basis of common sense. And a common fellow from Stavropol [Gorbachev] set this process in motion. |