The Summer of 1989: The First Opening of the Berlin Wall—in Budapest
Honecker was not only becoming an obstacle on the level of inter-German relations. In the context of the increasing polarization taking
[14] From a Timothy Garton Ash interview with Helmut Kohl, Bonn, 1 October 1991, in Ash, In Europe's Name, p. 118.
[15] M. S. Gorbachev, Otvety na voprosy professora Zh. Leveka (Responses to Questions from Professor Jacques Lévesque), Moscow, 12 July 1995.
place in Eastern Europe, CMEA's future was becoming more problematic—and just at a time when the Soviet leaders had new reasons to insist on preserving the two multilateral international institutions tying the region to the USSR. Certainly, the Warsaw Pact was considered more important than CMEA, but the state of the latter, after much neglect, was becoming more worrisome. A CMEA summit meeting planned for June 1989 had to be cancelled and put off until the fall. The meeting was cancelled because of the deadlock which existed with regard to reforming the organization. This reform, as mentioned above, presupposed, in particular, direct relations between enterprises in the various states and their autonomy in negotiating trade and the types of products and prices; all these collided head-on with the mechanisms in place in the entirely centrally planned economies. Apart from Romania, which had always played a marginal role in CMEA, and considering that Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria were making some pretenses of economic reform, the GDR was seen by Moscow as being the central locus of rigidity and incompatibility with the direction it wanted to give the organization.[16] At a time when Western Europe's economic integration and the improvement of East-West relations were accelerating, this represented an additional motive for the Soviets' impatience with Honecker and his regime.
In July 1989, a very influential citizen of the GDR was, himself, in a position to see the depth of that impatience and to understand the meaning it was developing. The person in question is Markus Wolf, the famous chief of the East German secret service, who had left that position in 1986. Influenced by the example of the transformations in the USSR, he had subsequently begun a struggle (a relatively solitary one, according to his own testimony, which is contested by other sources)[17] for a democratization of socialism in the GDR. The term "semi-dissidence," which one might use to characterize his situation, is perhaps a bit exaggerated; given the importance of the services he had rendered the GDR and his high-level connections in the USSR (of which
[16] See, notably, the comments of the former head of the Central Committee's department for relations with socialist states, Vadim A. Medvedev, in his Raspad, pp. 188–189.
[17] In a book with a very explicit title, Pierre de Villemarest claims that Markus Wolf used his network of important contacts in the USSR and GDR to organize a vast plot which ended in Honecker's ouster in October 1989. See Pierre de Villemarest, Le coup d'État de Markus Wolf (Paris: Stock, 1991). For his part, Wolf says that he played a more limited role. See Markus Wolf, In Eigenem Auftrag: Bekenntnisse und Einsichten (My Own Mission: Confessions and Reflections) (Munich: Schneekluth Verlag, 1991); excerpts translated for this book by Laure Castin. Even if Wolf surely does not disclose everything in his book, Pierre de Villemarest's assertion rests too much on speculation and nonverifiable information for it to be accepted, given what one can currently ascertain.
he was still a citizen in the early 1980s), he enjoyed solid immunity. In fact, in early 1989 he was still able to meet with Honecker personally, trying to convince him of the need to reform the GDR and put it on the same wavelength as the Soviet Union. In March, he had published—in West Germany—a novel (translated in the USSR) with strong pro-Gorbachev overtones. The story, entitled Die Troika, follows the life and political formation of three adolescents educated in the Soviet Union.
Invited to Moscow to introduce his book, he met on July 20, at the CPSU Central Committee headquarters, with Valentin Falin, director of the International Department. "To my great surprise," he writes, Falin, as well as several of his KGB friends, asked his opinion about the possible prospects of an opening of the Berlin Wall and of German unity. Until then, Wolf claims, he had been interested in the introduction of reforms in the GDR, without really thinking about their extension to the level of inter-German relations. He was also surprised to learn that Soviet experts on German affairs, like Falin, "had already expressed their support for a process of controlled reforms in the GDR, articulated with a parallel process of drawing nearer the two German states, which could end in the formation of a confederation...."[18] He even adds that "additionally, for the Soviets, the historic opportunity of a rapprochement between the two great workers' parties [the SPD and the SED] was emerging...." In short, the "Euro-Left" dream which the Italian Communist Party had held so dear, was back.
Knowing very well the Soviets' bureaucratic customs, he wrote: "Falin was not saying these things without a reason. He apparently had me pass on a message."[19] This does not mean that Gorbachev was already personally committed in favor of any very specific project. But given Falin's position in the Party hierarchy, he would not have allowed himself to transmit such a "hypothesis" to a person of Wolf's stature without at least Gorbachev's implicit agreement. Gorbachev himself told this author that he, for his part, did not have "any concrete idea of a confederation or anything of the kind in the summer of 1989."[20] But, he added, "observing the course of events in the GDR and seeing that the country's leadership was proving incapable of embarking on the road of transformations, we were forced to think about the future, about possible shifts in events."
[18] Wolf, In Eigenem Auftrag . The same remarks are repeated, word for word, in Markus Wolf, L'oeil de Berlin (Paris: Balland, 1992), p. 234.
[19] Ibid., p. 234.
[20] Gorbachev, Otvety na voprosy .
As this quote indicates, Gorbachev has remained, to this day, quite discreet about what he precisely did and authorized. Referring to the anxiety he was then experiencing due to the GDR's political immobilism, he wrote in his memoirs: "I would be lying if I were to say that we stood by with our arms crossed."[21] Without saying anything more, what he actually did was probably sufficiently indirect to allow him to immediately add: "But I must, just as expressly, deny the idea that our contacts with the GDR during this critical period were only attempts to put pressure on East Germany, for imposing change on it." When asked to specify what he meant by indicating that he had not remained "arms crossed," his response remained evasive.[22]
As for Markus Wolf, he returned to the GDR and continued, more or less in the background, to try to support the promotion of Hans Modrow, who had the confidence of Gorbachev's team.[23] Markus Wolf was not the only foreigner to whom Falin passed on a similar message. But another type of message was soon to be directed to the GDR.
Toward the end of the summer of 1989, Hungary's political evolution was to have a decisive impact on the GDR's own political future. In a gesture fraught with symbolism, Budapest had decided in May to "lift the Iron Curtain," by opening its western border with Austria. Many will recall the images of hundreds, and then thousands, of East German tourists descending on Hungary in late July and August in order to use the new situation as an exit to the West, and to West Germany. The same agreements between the GDR and other East European states which allowed East German citizens to go to Hungary also, though, forbade the governments of those countries from allowing them to leave to nonauthorized destinations. Since a small number of East Germans had nonetheless succeeded in crossing into Austria, thousands of others gathered in Hungary, with some of them occupying the West German embassy in Budapest. Their growing numbers, which at one point reached 65,000, put considerable pressure on the Hungarian gov-
[21] Gorbachev, Erinnerungen, p. 711.
[22] "We could not be indifferent to the events as they were unfolding in the two Germanys and in the relations between them. And certainly, we had to be ready for any possible change of events. That is what I had in mind when I said that we could not observe what was happening with our arms crossed" (Gorbachev, Otvety na voprosy .
[23] He recalls, "On October 2, fifteen thousand people demonstrated in Leipzig. That was the determining moment for me: I had to convince the greatest possible number of Central Committee members to do something! Stern [a West German magazine—author's note] helped me by publishing a photomontage: on one side, Honecker, Mielke, Krenz, and Stalin; on the other, Wolf, Modrow, Höpcke, and Gorbachev. The two camps were somehow becoming official!" Wolf, L'oeil de Berlin, p. 239.
ernment, which was soon asked by Bonn to give them the right to leave. On the opposite side, East Berlin was pressing the Hungarian authorities to respect their commitments to the GDR. The rest of the story is common knowledge. On September 10, Hungary finally opened its western borders for East Germans; that immediately led to a dramatic rise in departures from the GDR and extended the problem to Czechoslovakia.
At the time, as well as afterward, the Hungarian government stated that its decision was taken "fully independently." Two "nuances" should be added to that statement. The first, and less important, concerns the role of the FRG. Some days before the Hungarian decision, Gyula Horn, then foreign minister, was secretly sent to Bonn, where he met with Chancellor Kohl to discuss the possibility of opening the border for East Germans. In exchange, he obtained a promise from the Chancellor for DM1 billion in loans. It was the Hungarians who suggested allowing a "decent" delay after the border opening, before announcing the granting of credits; they were made public in October.[24]
The second "nuance" relates to the supposedly nonexistent role of the USSR. In an interview he granted us in 1992, Laszlo Kovacs (deputy foreign minister under Gyula Horn in 1989, and foreign minister since the 1994 return to power of the reformed Communists) gave us very important details about that role. "We were very worried about possible Soviet reactions to a decision on our part to let the East Germans leave for Austria. We knew that the East German reactions would be virulent. We expected economic reprisals, and we had made contingency plans to that end. But we were considerably more troubled about the possible response from Moscow."[25] Here again, the East European actors found it difficult to gauge the Soviet position, evaluating it rather conservatively. In formally keeping to the thesis of this being an independent Hungarian decision, and without using the actual term "consultation," Kovacs told us that, several days before notifying the main concerned parties, "we sent a note to Shevardnadze to inform the USSR about the probable direction we were intending to take." Shevardnadze's answer was terse: "This is an affair that concerns Hungary, the GDR and the FRG."[26] Quite simply, the USSR was declaring itself disinterested. The Soviet note was immediately interpreted in Budapest as a green light.
[24] Ash, In Europe's Name, p. 371.
[25] Interview with Laszlo Kovacs, Budapest, 2 May 1992.
[26] Ibid.
"Of course," Laszlo Kovacs continued, "we couldn't foresee that our decision would lead, two months later, to the fall of the Berlin Wall, and shortly thereafter to that of the East German regime, but we knew it would be a tough blow for Honecker and his power." Moscow knew it as well. The Soviet decision to exercise "neutrality" was all the less innocent, given that the GDR was insisting that the USSR pressure Hungary to respect its commitments to other Warsaw Pact members. Since some minimum of solidarity with the GDR regime had to be shown, it was the Federal Republic, not Hungary, which was blamed in Moscow for the East Germans' exodus. Ironically or cynically, it was Yegor Ligachev who was sent to East Berlin to affirm Moscow's solidarity and to explain the Soviets' positions.
One cannot overestimate the importance of Soviet behavior in this affair. In fact, if Moscow had strongly insisted that Hungary uphold its obligations to the GDR, its decision would very probably have been different.