PART III
THE GREAT PROJECT'S RUIN
Chapter Twelve
After the Earthquake
The last time I was to meet Ceausescu was on December 4, 1989. The representatives of the Warsaw Pact had gathered on my initiative.... There were many new faces.... I said (to Ceausescu) that the process we were living through at the moment had a clearly democratic character, despite all of its contradictions and the pain it was engendering. Due to this fact, there was no reason to fear the collapse or the end of socialism.
Mikhail Gorbachev (1995)[1]
A Difficult Reconciliation with Reality
Most of Gorbachev's collaborators and the entire Soviet leadership, just like the Western world, were caught unprepared by the rapidity and breadth of the earthquake which shook Europe at the end of 1989. In that context, the attitude which guided their behavior in the following several months was marked by three general characteristics. It consisted of refusing, to a certain extent, to see and admit the depth of the change which had taken place and the consequences which could arise from it. Soviet attitude was also characterized by some attempts to slow down the course of events. But, despite that, the dominant and most remarkable aspect of its behavior was its attempt to adjust to the new situation which had been created.
The first characteristic fulfilled a necessary function for the third. In other words, in order to be able to adapt themselves (with great difficulty) to the changes which had taken place, the Soviet leaders needed to deny, or at least to minimize somewhat, the depth of these transformations.
At the beginning of 1990, and for several more months, the main Soviet media and most Soviet leaders continued to speak of the "socialist countries" of Eastern Europe.[2] It is true, technically, that the economic
[1] Mikhail Gorbachev [Michail Gorbatschow], Erinnerungen (Memoirs) (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1995), pp. 925-926; translated from German for this book by Laure Castin.
[2] See A. Bogaturov, M. Nosov, and K. Pleshakov, "Kto oni, nashi soiuzniki?" (Who are they, our allies?), Kommunist, 1, January 1990, pp. 150–114.
structure and property relations had not changed from one day to the next in the region. And, for the next few months, the reformist Communists continued everywhere, albeit to varying degrees, to have a share of power. But for the Soviet leaders, educated in the school of Leninism and used to seeing the primacy of political factors, it must have been particularly difficult to downsize the radical character of the political transformation which was taking place in front of their very eyes. Even if the term "revolution" (and, a fortiori, "counterrevolution") was systematically avoided,[3] that was exactly what was happening.
The fall of the Honecker regime, followed by that of the Berlin Wall, and their acceptance by the USSR burst the main valve holding back changes elsewhere and limiting them from turning into a disaster. We have seen the result in Czechoslovakia and Romania, even if, in the latter case, the ultimate result was satisfactory for Moscow. In the case of Poland, the preservation of General Jaruzelski as head of state and of the armed forces and the presence of Communists at the head of the "power ministries" lost their meaning. On October 3, during a PUWP Central Committee meeting, one could still hear calls from its leading circles for a reconquest of power. But, as Georges Mink points out, "if the PUWP members did not immediately realize the irreversibility of the situation, the revolutionary wave which swept the East managed to destroy their morale...."[4] In the weeks that followed Honecker's ouster, the PUWP disintegrated. In various places, the cells declared their own dissolution. In January 1990, in confusion and disarray, the remnants of the PUWP, which dissolved itself, gave birth to two new parties which defined themselves as social-democratic. Even the more important of these two, the Social-Democratic Party of Poland (despite the dynamism of its new head, Alexander Kwasniewski) did not appear, in the conditions of the time, to have a future.
In Hungary, as planned, the Communist Party had held a congress in October to complete its transformation into a social-democratic party. The leaders committed a serious error in judgment in asking the HSWP members to formally apply for membership in the new party. They
[3] Later in 1990, some authors were to use the term "democratic revolution," but still in terms of linking it to a renewal of socialism. See Iurii Kniazev, "Demokraticheskie revoliutsii v Vostochnoi Evrope" (Democratic Revolutions in Eastern Europe), Kommunist, 14, September 1990, pp. 106–115.
[4] Georges Mink, "Pologne: le paradoxe du compromis historique," p. 58, in Pierre Kende and Aleksander Smolar, eds., La grande secousse: Europe de l'Est, 1989–1990 (Paris: Presses du CNRS, 1990).
expected to gather together about 70 percent of the 720,000 members still remaining, at that moment, in the HSWP. In fact, in the political context of fall 1989 and despite the fact that the new party still remained in power through its leaders, only 50,000 supporters had applied by the end of 1989. The setback was all the more bitter since those who, under the political leadership of Karoly Grosz, had refused to transform the HSWP and decided to maintain it, succeeded, for their part, in gathering 100,000 members. This was not the only disappointment for the new party. Denouncing the accord between the Hungarian Democratic Forum and the reformist Communists designed to favor Imre Pozsgay's election to the presidency, the radical, minority faction of the opposition succeeded in obtaining the holding of a referendum. The goal of the referendum-seekers was to push back the presidential election (which was to be held by direct popular vote) until after the election of a new Parliament, which would then elect the president. It was meant to assert the political primacy of the Parliament. On November 29, by a very narrow vote, the presidential elections, which Pozsgay was still sure to win just a few weeks earlier, were cancelled. While opinion polls had given the HSWP on the road to transformation 40 percent of decided votes in the summer, at the end of November, after the opening of the Berlin Wall, they were only estimated to have 16 percent support.[5]
Certainly, Soviet commentators close to the dominant ideology recognized that "world socialism" and the East European Communist Parties were undergoing new, and very serious, difficulties and that their relationship to power was changing fundamentally. But, in a more social-democratic than Communist perspective, they stated that, by developing their relations with the other Leftist parties, they could remain one of the essential, determinant political forces within their respective societies, if they knew how "to stay on the 'train' of processes common to all civilizations."[6] Others insisted on the objective resistance which the socioeconomic structure and property relations in Eastern Europe posed to a pure and simple changeover to capitalism.[7] In early 1990, a report of the Bogomolov institute, while recognizing that several Communist
[5] See Zoltan D. Barany, "The Hungarian Socialist Party: A Case of Political Miscalculation," Radio Free Europe Research (RAD Background Report-227, Hungary), 22 December 1989.
[6] See S. Kolesnikov and G. Cherneiko, "V stranakh sotsializma: dostizheniia, problemy, poiski. Vremia peremen" (In the Countries of Socialism: Realizations, Problems and Research. The Time of Changes), Kommunist, 18, December 1989, pp. 73–77.
[7] See L. Shevtsova, "Kuda idet Vostochnaia Evropa?" (Where is East Europe Going?), Mirovaia Ekonomika i Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniia, 4, April 1990, pp. 86–105.
Parties would be ousted from power, stated that, apart from Poland, there were "strong chances that the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria will successfully embark on a social-democratic road of the type taken by Sweden...." Whatever the outcome, the report underlined that the changes taking place in the region "cannot adequately be characterized by the old bipolar categories of a 'capitalist-socialist' view of the world."[8]
The efforts made by perestroika 's leaders and ideologues to downsize the upheavals going on in Eastern Europe can be explained in several different ways. They were aimed at not ceding too much ground to their political adversaries within the USSR. But it also simultaneously helped them to rationalize what was happening and not to lose, all of a sudden, the compass which had guided them up to that point. Between rationalization and belief, the border is often very fine or even impossible to draw, and we are touching here on the complex issue of the role of ideology in political action. Soviet leaders still needed to give a meaning to their actions, even when these began seriously slipping away from them. This writer asked Gorbachev, in light of the remarks (cited at the beginning of this chapter) he had made to Ceausescu in early December 1989, well after the fall of the Berlin Wall, if he really believed that reformed socialism still had a chance in Eastern Europe or if it had been statement of convenience, given his interlocutor. He answered: "Yes, at that moment, we believed that the guarantee of real freedom of choice and of real sovereignty in Central and Eastern Europe would act in favor of socialism."[9]
In a speech given to a foreign audience at the end of December 1989, Eduard Shevardnadze made remarks in this regard that must be considered significant. Speaking before the European Parliament in a slightly defensive tone, he warned against "the eagerness to make declarations about the end of History and of socialism." What was necessary, he said, was to make "a distinction between a specific model of socialism ... and the idea of socialism as a component of the global process of civilization." Speaking of Eastern Europe, he declared himself "convinced that socialist-type orientations will continue to guide these societies." He
[8] Marina P. Sil'vanskaia and Vyacheslav Dashichev, Preobrazovaniia v Vostochnoi Evrope i pozitsiia SSSR (The Transformations in Eastern Europe and the Position of the USSR), nonpublished report to the Central Committee; text presented to the author by Marina Sil'vanskaia.
[9] M. S. Gorbachev, Otvety na voprosy professora Zh. Leveka (Responses to Questions from Professor Jacques Lévesque), Moscow, 12. July 1995.
chose to see the recent events as proof of the compatibility between Western values and those defended by Gorbachev in the USSR, and of East-West convergence: "Now, while socialism is undergoing an evolutionary process, it is legitimate to dream and to speak of the future as a time when, on the basis of new, common, universal values, a synthesis of the best and most generous realizations of political and social thinking on a world scale will become reality."[10]
Still abroad, but this time in private during the Malta summit, Gorbachev made similar remarks to George Bush. Joined by Yakovlev, he asked his American counterpart, with some irritation, "Why are democracy, transparency and the market [!] 'Western' values?" Bush responded that this was "because they have long been those of the United States and Western Europe," to which Gorbachev retorted, with insistence, that "they are also ours" and that "they are universal values."[11] It was as if he feared that the USSR might be in the process of losing its own identity.
His illusions about the preservation of a certain form of socialism in the region seemed to be supported by the new leaders there, or maybe by how he chose to understand what they were saying. He relates, for instance, that during a meeting with President Vaclav Havel in February 1990, the latter had told him that it was erroneous "to believe that Czechoslovakia will return to capitalism."[12] Havel supposedly even added that "if the Soviet press were to state that I want to liquidate socialism, they would be mistaken."
Nearly one year later, at the end of 1990, when Communist reformers had been ousted from power nearly everywhere in Eastern Europe, and the new governments were doing everything in their power to eradicate the entire Communist and socialist legacy, Yakovlev (who at that time had been totally marginalized within Gorbachev's entourage) told Lilly Marcou:
Despite the confusion of the current situation, I believe that the Left will win. Through the return to universal values and the process of European integration, the socialist idea is taking root in Europe. The way out of this dead end that was the Cold War will be through perestroika in the USSR and through the evolution in the other East European nations. In the middle range, a great
[10] Pravda, 20 December 1989.
[11] Transcript of the conversation reprinted in Mikhail Gorbachev, Avant Mémoires (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1993), p. 127.
[12] Gorbachev, Erinnerungen, p. 887.
process of positive reappraisal of what has been rejected is inevitable; in the long range, the Left will rediscover other horizons. For the moment, the people are refusing socialism: the idea has stumbled on the real conditions of East European countries; it was destroyed by the Stalinist counterrevolution. Now that the Stalinist model has been eliminated, we will see the emergence of a post-Thermodor socialism. This new socialism, which will no longer know bureaucratic oppression, will be made in the name of mankind.[13]
Several years later, in 1994, the entourage of Gorbachev, with the exception of Yakovlev, who was no longer part of it, could take some consolation from the return of the reformed Communists to power in Poland, Hungary, and Bulgaria, and to see in it "a positive reappraisal of what has been rejected." But in 1990, the crest of the wave had yet to come—and it was to come for the Soviet Union itself.
The CPSU's Adaptation
If the whole Soviet political world was caught unprepared, to varying degrees, by the collapse of the East European regimes, it must be said that Gorbachev and his team were able to recover more quickly than their conservative adversaries. This fact is all the more striking since the conservatives, without having been able to predict the pace, had not stopped warning in private about the disastrous consequences which the Party leadership's policy risked engendering. Nonetheless, it took them several months before they were able to offer Gorbachev's policies a resistance that was relatively efficient and sustained. This opposition only began to be felt as such from September 1990. The chronic incapacity of the conservative forces to reverse Gorbachev's policies, if not to overthrow the leader himself, constitutes one of the most remarkable characteristics of the political process that lasted from his accession to power until the end of the USSR. It is notably due to their strongly ingrained habit to operate under a clearly identified command and in solidly established institutional framework and rules.[14] But this subject, in itself, would merit an in-depth study.
[13] Aleksandr Yakovlev, Ce que nous voulons faire de l'Union soviétique, Entretiens avec Lilly Marcou (Paris: Le Seuil, 1991), p. 104.
[14] Ligachev's memoirs bear eloquent witness to his continual loyalty to the cadre and to the leading bodies of the Party, and ultimately to Gorbachev himself, despite the continual political divergences with him and his circle. See Yegor Ligachev, Inside Gorbachev's Kremlin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993).
In the months that followed the collapse of the East European regimes, and in large measure as a result of it, the reformist camp in the Soviet Union fragmented, with the most radical elements abandoning the Party and even the idea of reformed socialism itself.
In a surprising way, it was Gorbachev and his immediate entourage who succeeded in getting back on track most quickly. As he had been able to do with success in the past under difficult conditions, the Soviet leader again managed to retake the initiative in order to accelerate changes within the USSR. It somewhat resembled the aftermath of the March 1989 elections for the Congress of People's Deputies (CPD), when, faced with the unexpected extent of the apparatus's defeat, he had seized the opportunity and demoted a considerable number of Central Committee members—something he had not been able or dared to do before.
If the Soviet leadership had great difficulties recognizing the new realities in Eastern Europe and adapting itself to them, it was still, overall, adjustment which won out over resistance, in its global political approach and its "program," even if this term, which presupposes an articulated, structured vision, cannot truly be adequate. Tangible proof of this is offered by the Central Committee's adoption in early February 1990 of a resolution, which Gorbachev succeeded in pushing through, abandoning Article 6 of the Soviet constitution, which guaranteed the Communist Party's leading role. At the same time, he had the principle of political party pluralism adopted, with the conditions of accreditation remaining to be fixed by a new law. This was a crucial step in the process of social-democratization which the CPSU never fully achieved. The decisions pushed through by Gorbachev actually meant the abandonment of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" (in reality, the dictatorship of the Party), which had been the main traditional line of demarcation between Leninism and social democracy. They sought to give a new legal, definitive form to the slogan of perestroika, according to which power for the Party ought to be gained and preserved through political means. These decisions did not, though, signify an admission of socialism's possible defeat in the USSR. On the contrary, they were aimed at assuring its viability through its adaptation to the "universal values." On the other hand, the preservation of a certain number of safeguards, notably on the ownership of land, were to continue to be ensured by law.
One can see a dialectic relation between the evolution of Gorbachev and the CPSU, and the events in Eastern Europe. On the one hand, it was marked by a willingness of the Soviet Union to adapt, to a certain
extent, to the new realities which had been created in Eastern Europe. On the other, as we have seen in chapter 7, the issue of party pluralism had already been debated, behind closed doors, in the CPSU leadership during the summer of 1989. That is why the Gorbachev leadership was able to accept, even though with considerable reluctance, the transformations which took place in the region in late 1989. In a certain way, one can agree with Karoly Grosz when he says: "It is not the collapse of the East European regimes that led to the collapse of the USSR.... It is the opposite which took place."[15] If the USSR's collapse is understood as being the erosion of Leninism, then it is indeed due to this that the Soviet leaders accepted and encouraged the political changes which led to the earthquake of 1989.
The opposite of Grosz's proposition nonetheless remains true as well. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall precipitated the collapse of the East European regimes, the latter also gave a formidable accelerating push to the USSR's implosion, which had hardly begun in 1989. And just like the countries of Eastern Europe flooded through the breach which opened up in the Berlin Wall, Lithuania would seek, as of early 1990, to escape through the enormous chasm which had suddenly been formed to the west, in its immediate neighborhood.
The Baltic Republics: A Domestic Microcosm of Eastern Europe
Mikhail Gorbachev's policy toward developments taking place in the Baltic republics in 1989 is extremely revelatory about Soviet policy in Eastern Europe during the same period and helps to illuminate it. The parallels in the Soviet leadership's approach and behavior are striking on several levels. But the parallels stop in 1990. However, the parallels of 1989 as well as Soviet behavior of 1990 and 1991 with respect to the Baltic states allow for rejecting the thesis that the Soviet leaders had wanted to abandon or get rid of Eastern Europe.
The creation of the Popular Fronts in the Baltic republics in the summer and fall of 1989 was perceived in Moscow by Gorbachev and his reformist assistants as a positive development. In fact, the Lithuanian front "Sajudis" ("the Movement"), which was to become the most radical of the fronts, had taken as its full name "the Movement for Perestroika ." Clearly nationalist from the beginning, it did not immediately
[15] See chapter 7.
advocate independence or separation. As we have already underscored, at least 50 percent of its members were also members of the Communist Party, and the latter's first secretary had participated with benevolence and consent at its founding congress. In both Moscow and among the reformist leadership of the Lithuanian Party, a relationship of osmosis between the two organizations was expected to emerge. In this way, the Party was to be "revitalized," becoming more sensitive to national aspirations and giving a more nationalist content to its actions. On the other hand, by joining and enveloping Sajudis, the Party could help to keep nationalism within acceptable limits. We know what happened. From the end of 1988 into 1989, Sajudis became openly pro-independence. Without going that far, the Lithuanian Party, in order to adjust to and follow the general trend, used an increasingly nationalist discourse, concentrating on the demand for sovereignty in various spheres. Despite this, Gorbachev, according to one of his most important lieutenants, bristled on several occasions against Ligachev's alarmism on these questions and his insistent desire to reestablish order there.[16]
In the March 1989 federal elections, Sajudis had won 75 percent of the seats reserved for Lithuania in the USSR Congress of People's Deputies. in addition, if the Lithuanian Party's first secretary, Algirdas Brazauskas, was elected to the CPD, it was because Sajudis did not field an opponent against him. Certainly, the presence of a group of pro-independence deputies in the CPD of the Soviet Union did not modify Lithuania's status. Moreover, Sajudis had not yet set a date for realizing independence. Nonetheless, these events made it possible to predict the turn that the situation in Lithuania could take at the next elections at the level of the Union republics. Two months later, in May, a Politburo meeting, of which we now know the contents, was dedicated to the situation in the Baltic republics. The heads of the Communist Parties of the three republics had been called to Moscow, and a report prepared by six Politburo members was discussed. The report found that a "disaster" (razgromnaia ) situation existed and underscored that power was in the process of slipping into the hands of the Popular Fronts. At the end of the discussion, Gorbachev outlined the conclusions he had drawn and simultaneously set the course of policy to be followed. Addressing the heads of the Baltic Parties, he told them: "We have confidence in the three
[16] See Anatolii Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym: po dnevnikovym zapisiam (Six Years with Gorbachev: From Journal Notes) (Moscow: Progress Kul'tura, 1993), pp. 249–250.
of you, and it cannot be otherwise.... It is impossible that the Popular Fronts, to which go percent of the people in the republics adhere, could be considered extremists. We must learn how to have discussions with them."[17] He expressed his conviction that "if we hold a referendum there, none of the three, not even Lithuania, will leave." He recommended delegating governmental responsibilities to the leaders of the Fronts, in order to give them the opportunity (or responsibility) of matching their words to their actions, presuming that it would not be the inverse which would occur. He added that there was no need "to become anxious about a differentiation in their use of sovereignty."
One is struck here by Gorbachev's serenity and the faith he could have in perestroika . A given republic's secession seemed to him absurd, and hence unthinkable. He totally underestimated the force of nationalism, persuaded that a number of concessions and adjustments would be enough to appease it. Certain of the Soviet Union's fundamental solidity, he was convinced that it possessed sufficient powers of retention to circumscribe and manage this type of problem, which he visibly did not believe to be a priority. Beyond Yakovlev, he was not the only reformer to see things in this way.[18]
Just as when confronted with other problems, Gorbachev saw in perestroika as much a necessity as a panacea. This explains why he added, under the cover of a conclusion, that it was necessary "to ponder and ponder again on how to transform our federation in practice. Otherwise everything will, indeed, disintegrate."[19] Yet, a special Central Committee plenum on the nationalities question, long announced, kept being put off. We also see here Gorbachev's ascendancy in the Politburo at the time, given the way he was able to shrug off rather easily a report of six of its members.
[17] See a report of Gorbachev's conclusions in Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym, p. 295.
[18] In February 1989, upon returning to Moscow from a stay in Vilnius, the author of this book had a discussion with the economist Nikolai Shmelev about the situation in Lithuania and the political preponderance that Sajudis and its pro-independence option had secured there. I asked him if he did not believe that this was the most difficult problem which the USSR would have to face in the near future, barring a resort to the mechanisms of repression, with all the consequences that would engender. He expressed the opposite opinion. Speaking of the Lithuanians and the Baltic peoples, he said: "These are civilized people, with whom we will necessarily find common ground. The demands for independence are a bargaining position to gain the maximum possible, but a compromise will certainly be found. The most vexing and dangerous problem is the absence of economic reform taking off."
[19] Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym, p. 295.
Several months later, quite soon after the debacle in Eastern Europe, on December 20, 1989, the Lithuanian Communist Party, despite warnings from Gorbachev, declared its independence from the CPSU. It understood this as a move to adjust itself to the ongoing evolution. Moscow hence formally and definitively lost all control over the Lithuanian Party and therefore over the principal political lever it counted on to retain and circumscribe nationalism in that Baltic republic. Rather courageously, Gorbachev personally went to Vilnius on January 11, 1990, in order to try, by persuasion, to reverse the course of events. It was the first time that a general secretary had gone to the small Lithuanian capital while in power. He mixed with the crowds and harangued them, using all imaginable arguments to convince them of the absurdity and dangers of secession. He expressed thinly veiled threats of economic reprisals. At the same time, he promised a law which would specify the procedures for exercising the right to secession enshrined in the constitution since Stalin's days. The law which was to be promulgated contained enough rules and constraints to make secession practically impossible.
In early March, Sajudis easily won the Lithuanian Supreme Soviet elections. Despite warnings from Moscow and the United States (communicated to the leader of Sajudis by the American ambassador), the new Supreme Soviet unilaterally declared Lithuania's independence on March 11, 1990. This was the first attempt at secession and the first proclamation of independence on the territory of the Soviet Union. Without the collapse in Eastern Europe, Sajudis would still have won the Lithuanian elections, but it certainly would not have dared to defy the center's power so rapidly and totally nor would the Lithuanian Communist Party have dared to leave the CPSU.
Just as in the case of Eastern Europe, Gorbachev's behavior toward Lithuania until the end of 1989—the encouragement given to the Lithuanian Party in its transformations, his permissiveness, the refusal to listen to warnings, and his neglect—might have led to the belief that he had decided to abandon the Baltic republics. His later behavior clearly proved the contrary. Indeed, after having had the Lithuanian declaration of independence voted illegal and without standing by an overwhelming majority of the USSR Supreme Soviet, he used all of the legal, economic, and political means, including the threat of using force, to stop its independence, without going to the ultimate end of his threat. He never accepted the secession of Lithuania and the other Baltic
republics.[20] It was only after the August 1991 coup, when he had lost all real power and was under pressure from Yeltsin and the United States, that he was obliged to resign himself to the fait accompli.
In the case of Eastern Europe, which belonged to the sphere of international relations, the means for stopping the course of events were more limited and the possible consequences of their use much more costly. That is why adjustment and adaptation won out over resistance, even if both components remained present. Even if they had to progressively bury their idea of a reformed socialism in Eastern Europe, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze continued to cling, as much as they could, to their project of a new European order. They did so through a constant, forced process of rationalization and adjustment that, at the end of the day, resulted in emptying the project of its initial meaning.
In December 1989, they could state with superficial calm, and not without reason, that a giant step had been taken toward ending the division of Europe and that the Cold War belonged to the past. But the configuration of Europe's possible future was likely to be very different from that which they had envisaged and sought. They began to feel it shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. They believed, however, that they had given enough proof of good behavior, and that they still had enough political instruments and guarantees from their foreign partners, to be able to save the essence of their European policy.
The policy which they followed until the summer of 1990 with respect to the process of German reunification gives eloquent testimony to the efforts they deployed to defend the European project which had so conditioned and permeated their policy in Eastern Europe and which continued to do so, even more than before.
[20] In his memoirs, Cherniaev recounts how he was harshly dressed down by Gorbachev for suggesting to him in a private conversation that it might be better to let the Baltic republics go (ibid., p. 338).
Chapter Thirteen
The Reunification and Status of Germany
The Last Battle for Europe
The current position of the Soviet Union formally excludes the possibility that a united Germany could be a member of NATO. That opposition does not, of course, signify that the Soviet leaders do not see the importance for Germany to be firmly integrated into an international security framework. The entire question concerns what kind of framework it will be.
Yuri P. Davydov and Dimitri V. Trenin[1]
Independently of what is now said about NATO, for us it is a symbol of the past.... And we will never be willing to assign it a leading role in the construction of a new Europe.
Mikhail Gorbachev[2]
How to Prevent German Reunification?
In order to understand the Soviet position on the question of German reunification at the end of 1989 and in January 1990, we must first of all put the events into their proper sequence and context.[3] In studying a period both of acceleration in history and of a telescoping of major events such as those which interest us here, this is a difficulty with which we are constantly confronted.
[1] Iurii P. Davydov and Dimitrii V. Trenin, "German Unity: The View from Moscow," The European Journal of International Affairs, Spring 1990, pp. 75–92.
[2] Interview with Time magazine, 4 June 1990.
[3] Contrary to what is the case concerning the other East European countries, an enormous literature was published, especially within Germany, but elsewhere as well, on Soviet policy towards East Germany and German reunification. I therefore do not intend to embark here upon a detailed study of the facts, gestures, and meanderings of Soviet behavior on the question. However, I do want to reconstruct its main outlines and display how they can better illuminate what are, according to me, the objectives which guided the Soviet approach to all of Eastern Europe in 1989.
One can say today that the fall of the Berlin Wall made German reunification inevitable. But in the context of the event, even if the opening seemed to render it possible, no one among Western or Eastern leaders envisaged reunification as probable or desirable in the near future. Even Chancellor Kohl, who was the first to call for it openly in his November 28 speech, did not foresee its realization before many years.
In a conjuncture where everything in Eastern Europe was slipping away from them, the Soviet leaders very rapidly saw this reunification not as a probability, but as a danger, full of negative consequences, which needed to be immediately prevented. As we have seen, it was not the process, but their loss of control over it, which they feared. The precipitating events and their lack of control did, indeed, risk costing them the various benefits which they had expected from it. They first hoped to forestall the danger of an early reunification by refusing to talk about it. Contrary to Kohl, who said that he wanted to calm the situation by evoking the prospect of German reunification, they stated that this would "destabilize" it. Believing, correctly, that the USSR was an important and absolutely essential actor with respect to this question, they thought it possible to limit Kohl's expectations by rejecting a discussion, and even the idea, of intermediate formulas which might be susceptible to accelerating the process.
Their calculations and expectations did not, however, depend only on an "ostrich strategy." Helmut Kohl's November 28 speech and his ten-point plan had surprised and irritated his Western allies, who had not been consulted. Having remained entirely silent about the foreign or international aspects of the steps which were to lead to reunification, Kohl had, to varying degrees, sown anxiety among everyone, in both East and West. Gorbachev and the other Soviet leaders therefore counted on the reticence and objections of West Germany's allies concerning reunification to help slow down the events.
Only a few days after Kohl's famous speech, Gorbachev had the opportunity, at the Malta summit of December 2, to query his American counterpart with a view to developing a minimal common approach on the question. Bush told him at the time: "We will not engage in any imprudent action and we will not make any attempt to accelerate a solution to the question of reunification.... As strange as it may be, you are in the same boat on this question as our allies in NATO. The most conservative among them approve your approach. At the same time, they must think about a moment when the notion of West Germany and East
Germany will have entered the annals of History. On this question, I am going to act prudently. And let our Democrats accuse me of being timid, if they want."[4]
Gorbachev chose to interpret these reassuring words in his own way, and said, notably to his Polish allies, during the Warsaw Pact summit which followed the Malta meeting, that Bush and he shared the same views on the reunification question and that it was not on the agenda.[5] Yet, it was Bush who was the first to rally around his West German ally's approach.[6] For a time, though, things were quite different for France and Britain, who feared the possible consequences of the emergence of a great Germany on the European scene.[7]
On December 6, François Mitterrand met Mikhail Gorbachev in Kiev, and even in his public remarks, the French leader supported his Soviet counterpart's approach.[8] At the end of December, he undertook an official visit to the GDR, with the clear goal of recalling and consolidating its legitimacy as a state. In Britain, Margaret Thatcher more than empathized with France's deep reticence. Given that they were the Federal Republic's allies, they could not offer resistance to Kohl's project that was as open as Gorbachev's. But they did say enough about it to the Soviet leaders that the latter became convinced that "they wanted, evidently, to slow down the process of German reunification, with Gorbachev's hands."[9] In private conversations with his advisers, Mitterrand could not have been more explicit about that. After Kohl's surprise speech of November 28, advocating reunification, Mitterrand said angrily, "He did not tell me anything! Nothing at all! I will never
[4] From notes taken by Gorbachev's assistant: Anatolii Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym: po dnevnikovym zapisiam (Six Years with Gorbachev: From Journal Notes) (Moscow: Progress Kul'tura, 1993), p. 310.
[5] Interview with M. Rakowski, Warsaw, 3 March 1993.
[6] It has now been very well demonstrated and documented that Bush not only sup-ported Kohl but also played a very active and crucial role in neutralizing British and French opposition. See Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Transformed (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), pp. 102–148.
[7] Gorbachev gave instructions for Soviet policy to be "more closely coordinated with that of France and Britain." Mikhail Gorbachev [Michail Gorbatschow], Erinnerungen (Memoirs) (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1995), p. 715; translated from German for this book by Laure Castin.
[8] In a joint press conference in Kiev, after having recalled that France was Germany's ally, François Mitterrand declared that "no European country can act without taking into consideration the others' opinions ... and the situation inherited from the Second World War" (Pravda, 7 December 1989).
[9] Those are the words of his international affairs assistant; see Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym, p. 310.
forget it! Gorbachev will be furious: he will not allow that to happen. It is impossible! I will not need to oppose that, the Soviets will do it for me."[10] That is, more or less, what Bush had understood and said to Gorbachev in Malta.
Again, it was the dynamics of events on the ground that upset the political leaders' calculations. In mid-January, the Modrow government's intention to preserve a "reformed" Stasi provoked riots and the occupation of its offices. Even the East German army showed signs of disintegration while emigration continued. If the East German regime had already collapsed, this time it was the state which began to crumble. Modrow was obliged to open his government to all political forces while awaiting the results of elections initially scheduled to take place in June but finally brought forward to March 18. For his part, in order to limit an immigration which threatened to grow even more, Kohl decided that a monetary union had to be achieved rapidly by extending the West German mark to the East.[11] It was a step which was initially planned to come about much further down the road toward unification. In fact, it was the entire process which he found appropriate to accelerate.
The Soviet leaders realized that they had to adjust to the new situation. They did it so grudgingly that they found themselves thereafter constantly out of step with the dynamics of the events. During a visit to Moscow at the end of January, Hans Modrow restated the Soviet-approved project of a "contractual community" between the two Germanys. On February 2, Gorbachev sent Kohl a message in which he gave his approval to "a contractual community as a step on the way to a Confederation between the two German states."[12] The Soviet leader was starting from Kohl's point of departure on November 28. To the great relief of his German interlocutor, Gorbachev told him clearly, eight days later, during a face-to-face meeting, that he accepted the principle of German unity.
Nonetheless, the Soviet leaders still envisaged that its realization should take place over a number of years. Even at a later stage, Shevardnadze still spoke of ten years.[13] There was certainly in this an inten-
[10] Jacques Attali, Verbatim III (Paris: Fayard, 1995), p. 350.
[11] "If we do not want them to come to the DM, then the DM must come to them," was the pithy formula of Kohl's principal adviser on reunification, Horst Teltschik. See excerpts from his diary in Der Spiegel, 30 September 1991, pp. 118–140; translated from German for this book by Laure Castin.
[12] See Teltschik, ibid.; emphasis added.
[13] Izvestiia, 20 June 1990.
tion to slow things down and a lack of farsightedness. But, here again, their approach was not without foundation in political reality. They had very good reasons to count on an SPD victory in the elections that were to take place in the GDR in March. All of the polls showed the party would be victorious.[14] The SPD, for its part, foresaw a much less rapid reunification than Kohl's party. Fearing for the survival of the majority of East German enterprises and the social consequences of a brutal transition to the market economy, it envisaged longer stages.[15] In addition, it favored negotiations by the GDR on the conditions of creating a new German state, rather than, as was in fact to happen, its absorption by the Federal Republic.
At the end of January, during a meeting of what Falin called the "crisis committee"[16] on the German question created by Gorbachev, Cherniaev suggested that it was necessary to seek an understanding with Kohl rather than with the SPD. Shevardnadze, he says, was in agreement, but Falin, Yakovlev, and Shakhnazarov thought it expedient to bet on the SPD.[17] Gorbachev, unsurprisingly, believed that both ought to be cultivated. He did, nonetheless, reject a suggestion from Cherniaev, who had gone so far as to propose cancelling Modrow's planned visit, arguing that the latter no longer represented anything.
The head of the SPD, Oscar Lafontaine, came to Moscow himself on the eve of the elections, and Gorbachev told him of his hope that the Social Democrats would win the East German elections. More than any other item, it was on the crucial question of a future unified Germany's international status that the convergence of views between the USSR and the SPD was strongest and most important for the Soviet leaders.[18] And so, its unexpected defeat was received as a new shock in Moscow.
[14] In his diary entry dated 14 March, Teltschik mentions one poll that gave 20 percent of the vote to his party and 44 percent to the SPD, which could therefore hope to win an absolute majority of the seats in the GDR Parliament (Der Spiegel, 30 September 1991).
[15] Izvestiia, 21 February 1990.
[16] Valentin Falin, Politische Erinnerungen (Political Memoirs) (Munich: Droemer Knaur, 1993), pp. 489–490; translated from German for this book by Laure Castin. The members of this committee, in addition to Gorbachev, were Yakovlev, Shevardnadze, Iazov, Kriuchkov, Cherniaev, Shakhnazarov, and Falin himself.
[17] Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym, pp. 346–347.
[18] See Daniel Dignard, Analyse d'une prise de décision: l'acceptation de l'unification allemande par l'URSS en 1989–1990 (Master's thesis in political science, Montréal, Université du Québec à Montréal, 1992).
Where and How to "Anchor" a Unified Germany?
From the moment that Helmut Kohl made his famous speech on November 28, 1989, even if he did not say a word about it, the principal and most troubling problem that it posed for the rest of the world was, obviously, the place of a greater Germany in the international system. This was the question that Gorbachev immediately raised in the flood of reproaches he addressed to Kohl through the West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher.[19] The European system which Gorbachev had envisaged was far from being sufficiently developed to incorporate German reunification into it, and the rapid realization of the latter could imperil the former's premises and foundations. It was first of all, and mainly, this danger the Soviet leaders had wanted to prevent by refusing to discuss even the principle of reunification.
With a lesser sense of danger, but nonetheless with anxiety, this was the same question that Western leaders immediately asked themselves. Very shortly after Kohl's speech, George Bush demanded, as the only condition, that the new Germany be a part of NATO. Before seeking to reassure the Soviets, Kohl obviously needed to reassure his own allies, and he rapidly gave them the demanded guarantee, without wondering about its consequences. His European allies were far from being entirely convinced, fearing the place a unified Germany would take in NATO and the configuration the organization would have as a result.
For seven months, from December 1989 to July 1990, the question of a united Germany's membership in NATO became the principal international nightmare for the Soviet leadership. The opposition which they maintained with obstinacy during this period seemed like some kind of ultimate combat to save something of their grand design for a new international order in Europe and the place which they saw the USSR occupying in it.
Let us first of all distinguish the respective importance of their problems. The prospect of the incorporation of a unified Germany into NATO clearly implied a very serious modification of the military equilibrium in Europe, and an equal reduction in the USSR's relative military power. Gorbachev was sufficiently preoccupied with the USSR's international power to be sensitive about this aspect of things. Even if
[19] See chapter 8.
he was ready to considerably downsize the meaning and foundations of strategic parity, it was still a notion to which he remained attached. However, this was an area of concern that was much more troublesome for the military and the conservative political leaders than it was for Gorbachev's inner circle. Cherniaev, Gorbachev's adviser on international affairs, for example, reports that Ligachev, during this period, did not cease to "scream" that "NATO is drawing closer to the USSR's borders."[20] Even publicly, he evoked the danger of a new German threat.[21] And military leaders, of course, underscored the serious change which would result for the balance of forces from the integration of a greater Germany into NATO.[22]
On several occasions, Gorbachev invoked the security problems which would result from this for the USSR. But, for leaders like himself, Shevardnadze, and Yakovlev, who were the most pro-Western Politburo members, another question of different importance than military balance and security was at stake. If Germany became integrated into NATO, then the Warsaw Pact's raison d'etre and survival would be seriously threatened, as we did in fact witness; the same would be true of CMEA. The Warsaw Pact was the USSR's main structural affiliation with Europe and the most important framework for its influence in European affairs. If NATO were to become larger, while the Warsaw Pact disappeared and nothing emerged to replace it, the USSR risked being completely marginalized in European political affairs, and hence relegated to the fringes of Asia. And yet, as we have often underscored, one of perestroika 's principal objectives was precisely to integrate the USSR into Europe structurally, and as solidly as possible.
The disarray and obstinacy which the Soviet leaders demonstrated throughout all the discussions and negotiations surrounding German reunification must be understood in this context.
This is an opportune point at which to open a parenthetical note that underlines the contemporaneity of this problem and its resurgence in a very different context, but one that presents several analogies. After the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and of the USSR itself, it is the East European states' adhesion to NATO which began to appear on the agenda, as early as 1993. The radical pro-Western Russian leaders, who had chased Gorbachev out of power and wanted to dissolve
[20] Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym, p. 347.
[21] Pravda, 7 February 1990.
[22] See the article by I. Vladimirov in Krasnaia Zvezda, 15 March 1990.
the USSR so as to better integrate Russia into the "civilized world," still occupied the most powerful political positions in Moscow. The Eastern European countries' potential membership in NATO has been the subject of vehement opposition from the nationalists, the "centrists," and the radical pro-Western group, here again for very different reasons. The nationalists, military, and centrists have seen in the extension of NATO up to the borders of the former Soviet Union a Western penetration into Russia's traditional sphere of influence and a threat to its strategic and geopolitical interests. The radical Westernizes, including former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, understood it as a new structuring of Europe that still excluded Russia and put it even more on the outer periphery of the continent. They saw it as a disavowal and a rebuff of their foreign policy, the prime objective of which had been, at any price and as rapidly as possible, to link Russia to Western international institutions. That rebuff, according to them, can only delegitimize their policy and abet the nationalists and those pining for the old regime. In order to dissuade their Western partners from proceeding, they used the "blackmail" threat of nationalism on them, somewhat as Gorbachev had "warned" François Mitterrand in Kiev that the West would soon see a general taking his place if German reunification happened "prematurely."
Gorbachev's fundamental preoccupation with respect to a unified Germany's inclusion in NATO is easy to discern, since it appeared in the private and public declarations of the Soviet leaders, even before they had accepted the principle of German unification.
In his speech to the European Parliament on December 20, 1989, Eduard Shevardnadze, while firmly insisting on the preservation of the GDR, stated that the future of the two German states would later be determined "in the framework of the pan-European process's development."[23] He reaffirmed that such a process should take place on the basis "of a decisive dismantling of the structure of military confrontation, parallel to the planning and construction ... of structures of integration in different spheres which will advance the formation of a truly unified Europe."
At the beginning of March, after the USSR had been compelled to accept the principle of German reunification, Gorbachev stated, and not for the first or last time, that the integration of the future Germany into
[23] Pravda, 20 December 1989.
NATO was "absolutely out of question."[24] He recalled that "progress toward reunification" ought to take place "stage by stage," and that this process "should be linked to the process of European rapprochement, which also needs to be accelerated." The most eloquent and clear terms used to express the Soviet position were those of a Pravda commentator: "The process of German unification should be organically linked and synchronized with the European process and the creation of an essentially new security structure in Europe, a structure which would replace the alliances. That is the official Soviet position."[25]
The new security structure, as mentioned by Gorbachev in his press conference, was to be put in place through the reinforcement and institutionalization of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). This organization was to surpass and replace the alliances threatened in the future by German reunification. In this structure for coordinating European security, the USSR would have occupied an important place. But it was still only embryonic and its "operationality" was still far from being in place. That is why the United States preferred the more familiar and reassuring framework of NATO.
From the Soviet perspective, the whole problem lay in the synchronization. To achieve it, it would have been necessary to slow down the pace of German unification on the one hand and to accelerate the establishment of a new European security system on the other. Both were of course very difficult tasks to achieve.
When the Soviets accepted the principle of German unification at the end of January, they did so in the framework of the Modrow plan, which foresaw the neutrality of a future single Germany. That was the position to which the USSR held until after the March 18 elections in East Germany. The Soviet leaders knew very well that the prospect of a greater neutral Germany was one of the most worrisome scenarios for Western governments, as it also was for them. Germany's neutrality would have called into question the existence of NATO just as much as that of the Warsaw Pact,[26] not to mention the negative images that the idea of a greater Germany, totally free in its foreign and military policies, evoked
[24] Remarks made at a press conference given on the occasion of another visit by Hans Modrow to Moscow (Pravda, 7 March 1990).
[25] Yuri Solton, 21 February 1990, Foreign Broadcast Information Service, FBIS-SOV-90-039, 27 February 1990; emphasis added.
[26] That was precisely the meaning of Gorbachev's warning to Genscher on December 5, 1989 in opposing the idea of premature reunification: "What would NATO mean without the Federal Republic?" See chapter 8.
in the West. That is why the Soviet demand for a neutral Germany must be seen less as a serious proposition (which, incidentally, was not relevant for the near future) than as a way of upsetting the West and pressing it to put in place a new collective European security system to better tie down Germany, with the USSR's participation. Moreover, it was also the approach favored by Germany's Social Democrats.
After the East German elections of March 18, this entire approach, fragile from the beginning, was untenable. The possible stages and potential allies slipped away completely. Several weeks later, a victorious Helmut Kohl stated his intention to realize unity before the end of the year. Even the SPD rallied to the idea of integrating a united Germany into NATO. France, which had until then itself sought to slow down the process, reluctantly decided to support Kohl's policy, in exchange for his assurance of the implementation of a political construction which would reinforce the European Community. This could only accentuate the difference between the two parts of Europe.
Despite these setbacks, it would take another four long months before the Soviet Union brought itself to accept a united Germany's integration into NATO.
An Erratic Battle from Behind
Despite its long duration, and the permanence of the preoccupations which we have just indicated, the struggle against a united Germany's membership in NATO was far from being coherently organized by the Soviet leaders. It was also not led with equal conviction on their part. This is not surprising given the extremely difficult and changing conditions in which the battle took place and the disarray to which they necessarily gave rise.
Valentin Falin reports that as early as the end of November 1989 and the first meeting of the "crisis committee" on the German question, some of Gorbachev's advisers already had a defeatist attitude, suggesting that Moscow needed to accept the idea that a united Germany would join NATO and to find a way of "saving face."[27] He himself, supported on this by Yakovlev, strongly opposed such an approach. Falin, who accuses Shevardnadze and Gorbachev of being soft and reproaches the latter
[27] Falin, Politische Erinnerungen, p. 489. In his own memoirs, Cherniaev (Shest' let s Gorbachevym ) confirms that he indeed had such an attitude.
for having ultimately capitulated before the demands of Kohl and the West, reports that, at the meeting, the general secretary did not take a very firm position.[28] This was often his habit and a way of keeping the middle ground. But as we shall see, beyond his public positions already cited, he would much later show an attitude of categorical refusal behind closed doors, in the Politburo for instance.
Publicly, among high-level leaders close to Gorbachev, it was indeed Falin who expressed the most hard-line position, threatening that the USSR would veto reunification "if the Western alliance holds fast to its demand to integrate all of Germany into NATO."[29]
In order to reinforce its bargaining position, the USSR sought as much as possible to have the negotiations take place within the framework of the victorious coalition which triumphed over Hitler's Germany. As is common knowledge, the 1945 Yalta and Potsdam accords required unanimity for fixing the conditions of reconstituting the German state and of a peace treaty with it. In addition, the massive presence of its troops in East Germany gave the USSR a de facto veto right, which it avoided invoking openly. That is precisely where the paradox in the Soviet position on Germany's future lay. It was very strong on the legal and military level, but very weak in the political sphere not only because of the unraveling of the GDR, but also due to the crucial importance Moscow attached to good relations with the Western powers, and especially with West Germany, of which it became, progressively, volens nolens, a hostage.
When the United States proposed the formula "2 plus 4" (the two Germanys for the internal aspects and the four Potsdam signatories for the international issues) as the framework for negotiations on reunification, the Soviet leaders insisted that the formula be reversed.[30] In proposing to call the negotiations "4 plus 2," they intended to underscore the primacy of international arrangements and the rights of the four victorious powers. Yet, on February 14, on the fringes of the "Open Skies" conference in Ottawa, which brought together the foreign ministers of the two alliances' twenty-three members, an agreement was announced on the calling of a "2 plus 4" conference. In his memoirs, Falin accuses
[28] Ibid.
[29] Boston Globe, cited by Hannes Adomeit, "Gorbachev and German Unification: Revision of Thinking, Realignment of Power," Problems of Communism, 39, July–August 1990, pp. 1–23.
[30] Falin, Politische Erinnerungen, pp. 490–491.
Shevardnadze of having, on his own authority, altered the Soviet position in order to please Genscher and of having minimized the importance of the question.[31] Indeed, Genscher had insisted on the "2 plus 4" formula precisely to avoid the Federal Republic's appearing to be a power under trusteeship. After the Christian Democrats' victory in the East German elections of March 18, it was the two Christian Democrat Germanys, or rather Bonn, which set the terms and conditions of the process. As one observer noted, the "2 plus 4" formula hence became a "5 against 1" formula.[32]
From then on, the USSR's lonely struggle was kept up in an impulsive fashion, without a very clear vision of what it wanted and hoped to truly, concretely obtain by preserving objectives that were becoming increasingly less realistic.
At the end of March, a Politburo meeting endorsed a list of directives for Shevardnadze, who was to go to Washington and meet President Bush at the beginning of April. We obtained a copy of this list in Moscow. The document begins with a remarkable admission of weakness. Shevardnadze is first told to emphasize to the American president "the utility of overcoming the temptation which is showing in his administration to use the difficulties we are undergoing in Eastern Europe and in our country in order to obtain unilateral advantages...."[33] The minister is instructed to "show the illusory character of the idea that the USSR could, under pressure, reconcile itself with the de facto Anschluss of the GDR" and "to make it clearly understood to the president that we cannot be in agreement with a united Germany's joining NATO." The Politburo's instructions did not demand German neutrality any more. But, at the same time, they also did not propose any precise alternative, visibly as a result of the lack of a clear and realistic consensus among the leaders themselves. The document simply stipulated, still to Bush's attention, that it "is necessary to seek solutions acceptable to all" and "to develop concrete ideas," without formulating any. Even if its realization seemed ever more difficult, the Politburo still insisted on "synchronization with the pan-European process" and, in order to do so, on the "institution-
[31] Ibid., p. 492.
[32] Walter Schütze, "Les aspects extérieurs de la réunification allemande," Allemagne d'aujourd'hui, 119, October–December 1990, pp. 6–21.
[33] "Ukazaniia dlia besedy Ministra inostrannykh del SSSR c Prezidentom SShA, Dzh. Bushem" (Instructions for the meeting of the USSR Foreign Affairs Minister with the U.S.A. president, George Bush), Archives of the Ts Kh S D, 89 kollektsiia, perechen' 9, dokument 100 (sekretno ).
alization of the Helsinki process."[34] Without making it a necessary condition, the Politburo stressed that the best approach was "a peace treaty which would draw a final line under the last war and would define Germany's politico-military status." In any case, and this represented a toughening of the Soviet position, the document clearly affirmed that "until the creation of new European security structures, the rights and responsibilities of the four powers in German affairs, including the presence of military missions, should be fully preserved."[35]
As Falin points out in his memoirs, and is also underscored by our source for this document, Shevardnadze sometimes took his liberties with the Politburo. Benefitting from the confusion which had settled into relations between the Party and the state, he often only answered for his actions to Gorbachev, who left him a significant margin of action. This later allowed Gorbachev to let his minister suffer the sting of conservative criticism. Therefore, it was bit by bit that the Politburo recommendations appeared in Shevardnadze's position during the first "2 plus 4" meetings.[36] In the first place, in Washington, he put forward, as a "concrete idea" likely to be the most "acceptable to everyone," the not entirely new notion of a united Germany's simultaneous membership in NATO and the Warsaw Pact.[37] This became the principal proposal of the various formulas advanced by Moscow. The United States immediately refused it, stating that this was simply a proposal for neutrality in a new guise. This was absolutely incorrect from a military security point of view, as Germany would have hence been doubly tied or "anchored." It was, however, true from a political perspective, to the extent that the formula would have permitted the USSR to influence the foreign policy orientations of a united Germany rather than leaving it to an international framework which was entirely foreign to Moscow.
At the beginning of May, on the eve of the first official session of the "2 plus 4" conference, there was a "very tense" Politburo meeting, according to Cherniaev.[38] He tells us that Gorbachev got carried away and exclaimed: "We will not let Germany join NATO, and that's that. I
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] See notably his speech at the opening of the "2 plus 4" conference (Izvestiia, 7 May 1990).
[37] While simultaneously stating that there could be other scenarios and that double membership could appear to be naive. See Izvestiia, 8 April 1990.
[38] Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym, p. 347.
would even go so far as calling off the Vienna arms negotiations, but I will not allow it." Intimidated, Yakovlev, Kriuchkov, and Yazov who, with Shevardnadze, had signed a working document which was less rigid (Cherniaev does not specify its content), did not dare to make any reply. We see here that Gorbachev was not, or at least not always, as "indecisive" as Falin suggests. His intransigent words could be explained by Ligachev's presence in the Politburo and by the growing pressure of the conservatives. But they equally reflect Gorbachev's own objections and his difficulty in accepting defeat on this issue.
The only concrete "reprisal" which was made against Western obstinacy was the announcement, in May, of the suspension of the partial Soviet military withdrawal from the GDR, which was part of the unilateral measures announced before the United Nations by Gorbachev in December 1988.
Given the impossibility of finding a quick solution on the basis of the Soviet bottom-line demand, Shevardnadze decided to propose a decoupling of the internal and international aspects of unification. In other words, unification could go ahead as rapidly as the Germans wanted, and the difficult determination of the new state's international status would be put off until later. In the meantime, Germany would temporarily remain in both alliances. This situation would have favored the transformation of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and their fusion into a new collective security system.[39] But the Germans were the most opposed of all to any decoupling that would have left the new Germany a state with limited sovereignty.
Parallel to double membership, Moscow was also putting forward, gropingly, other options which reflected a certain confusion but which always had in common its refusal of a full German integration into NATO. This is how, notably, the proposal came about of giving Germany a status in NATO similar to that of France; that is, it would be a member of the alliance but not a part of its military organization. Such a solution would have given a measure of satisfaction to the Soviet military and conservatives. At the same time, it would have sufficiently weakened NATO and threatened its existence, making the establishment of a new European security structure an urgent priority. The United
[39] See E. Shevardnadze, "Towards a Greater Europe—the Warsaw Treaty Organization and NATO in a Renewing Europe," NATO's Sixteen Nations, April–June 1990, pp. 18–22; cited by G. Wettig, Changes in Soviet Policy towards the West (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), p. 163.
States was not hostile to a certain pan-European structure and to an institutionalization of the CSCE, but on the strict condition that this not be a step toward the dissolution of NATO and that the latter not be subordinated to any new structures or organizations. Beyond that, they—just like the Germans—were prepared to make a whole series of concessions permitting Gorbachev to save face.
This issue was the subject of much debate during Gorbachev's visit to the United States in early June and in his meetings with George Bush. In Washington, it had been hoped that the summit would produce an agreement on the main point of contention. That was not to happen. Yet, from various signals they received, the Americans had the impression that Gorbachev was getting ready to give way. On this score, a controversial episode was later reported. At a given moment, during a conversation with Bush, Gorbachev reportedly declared that the Germans themselves should have the right to decide the alliance of their choice. Bush, surprised, asked him if he would be willing to repeat that remark. Gorbachev responded by an affirmative sign, but the exchange was interrupted by a long declaration from Falin against any notion of Germany's integration into NATO.[40] In his memoirs, Falin states that this is an incorrect interpretation and that Gorbachev's nod was addressed to him, indicating that he (Falin) should express and elaborate the reasons for Soviet opposition.[41] It does, in fact, seem unlikely that he would have permitted himself to interrupt Gorbachev in the presence of the U.S. president. But the Americans saw in other signals evidence of a weakening of the Soviet leader's opposition.[42] Curiously, but mistakenly, Gorbachev, for his part, also had the impression that Bush would end up giving in. Immediately after one of his meetings with his American counterpart, Gorbachev confided to Falin, as the latter reports in his memoirs, "We were right not to listen to Eduard [Shevardnadze]. It is difficult to estimate what will happen, but, in any case, the Americans do have in reserve alternatives to Germany's participation in NATO."
If Gorbachev was not yet ready to resign himself to that option, he was already thinking up all sorts of imaginable (and less imaginable)
[40] See M. R. Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), p. 200.
[41] Falin, Politische Erinnerungen, p. 493.
[42] See Zelikow and Rice, Germany Unified, pp. 277–279.
scenarios. This is how he, in hypothetical form, asked Bush about the idea of the USSR joining NATO. George Bush responded with a quip, stating that he doubted the Soviet military was ready to serve under American command. The meaning of Gorbachev's question is quite clear. In desperation, membership of the Soviet Union in NATO would have transformed the latter into a new European security structure of which it would have been a full member.[43] Here again, it is the same dilemma which faced the Russian leaders in 1993 when the question of extending NATO to the other East European countries first arose.
After the Bush-Gorbachev summit, the Soviet position seemed to harden, to the extent that the 28th (and last) CPSU Congress in July approached and that it seemed as if an offensive by the conservatives there would score an important victory. To everyone's surprise, the opposite occurred. Gorbachev's dramatic counteroffensive ended in an unexpected success. Ligachev, who put his name up as candidate for the post of deputy general secretary, was defeated by Gorbachev's candidate and retired from public life. This was the last, and very ephemeral, victory of Gorbachev over the conservatives. The room to maneuver which he reconquered allowed him to settle the German question, but practically against all the objectives which had been the most important of his foreign policy.
In the Absence of Europe, Germany
It was not in the framework of the "2 plus 4" negotiations and conference, designed for this purpose, that agreement was reached on the international conditions of German reunification. Instead, it was at the Kohl-Gorbachev summit in mid-July, and to the surprise of the entire world, including Kohl himself. This manner of proceeding was intended by Gorbachev to be highly significant.
As we have seen in the preceding chapters, the Soviet leaders had believed at the beginning of 1989 that, on the entire gamut of important questions, the Federal Republic was becoming the USSR's main interlocutor and closest partner in Europe. Therefore, if it wanted to use its
[43] This hypothesis was discussed at the time in the USSR. It had been publicly presented to Shevardnadze, who declared that it was not on the agenda. See his interview in Novoe Vremia, 20, May 1990, pp. 5–7.
veto to block the conclusion of an international agreement or to do so by threatening not to withdraw its troops, it would have been first and foremost its good relations with Germany, more so than with any other country, which would have seriously deteriorated. Gorbachev would have largely lost the enormous credit he had gotten from the German public. By lifting the last obstacle to reunification directly with Kohl, he could hope to gain even more from it in the future. Obviously, the political cost of the investment was enormous.
While remaining very firm on the question of NATO membership, Kohl and Genscher had constantly sought to maintain a privileged relationship with Moscow and to present to it prospects for a bright common future. The Soviet leaders had made small tests in that regard, notably in the economic sphere. So, in January, before the USSR officially accepted the principle of unification, Shevardnadze had sent Kohl a message, recalling the terms of his conversation with Gorbachev in June 1989, in which the Soviet leader had asked if the USSR could count on West Germany in case of emergency, and asking if Kohl's positive response at the time still held.[44] The delivery of 100,000 tons of meat was rapidly organized by the Bonn government. In April, while the difficult negotiations on Germany's international status were on-going, Shevardnadze asked for a DM 5 billion credit, which he quickly obtained. All of this caused Kohl to say, privately and a bit presumptuously: "For the USSR, the question of future economic relations is more important than that of a united Germany's membership in NATO."[45] Even larger sums were committed during the Kohl-Gorbachev summit and in the course of the negotiations which followed.
It would be, at the very least, an exaggeration to say that the economic price paid by Germany was the most decisive factor in Gorbachev's final decision.[46] This price was, anyway, very small, given Soviet needs and with respect to what Bonn was ready to invest in
[44] See Teltschik, diary, Der Spiegel; Horst Teltschik, 329 Tage, Innenansichten der Einigung (329 Days, Unification Seen from Inside) (Berlin: Siedler Verlag, 1991); cited by Timothy Garton Ash, In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), p. 350.
[45] Teltschik, 329 Tage, p. 204; cited by Laure Castin, "L'URSS et la question allemande de 1985 à 1991 (Doctoral thesis in international relations, Université Paris 1, 1992), p. 126.
[46] On the importance attributed to this factor, see A. A. Akhtamazian, Ob'edinenie Germanii, ili Anshlius GDR k FRG (German Unification, or the FRG's Anschluss of the GDR), vol. 2 (Moscow: MGIMO, 1994), p. 75.
restoring the GDR.[47] At the same time, it was certainly an important consideration in a context where the USSR's economic difficulties were seriously worsening. But, above all, Germany was the only Western country it could count on for economic aid, however insufficient. After the Malta summit, the United States had, for the first time, promised aid to the USSR. But, in the months that followed, it was blocked and became conditioned on a negotiated settlement between Moscow and Lithuania.
The consolidation and the elevation of political relations with Bonn to a new, higher level promised to continue and accentuate the partnership and its economic advantages. As of April, Bonn had proposed the negotiation of a major friendship and cooperation treaty to the USSR, in order to manage German-Soviet relations after unification. The proposition had been welcomed enthusiastically by the Soviet ambassador in Bonn, Kvitsinski, and by the Soviet leaders. Kvitsinski dreamed of a renaissance of the Russian-German partnership of the Bismarck era, which had formed the dominant duo in Europe.
It was very much a small remake of Rapallo that Gorbachev wanted to accomplish by reserving for Kohl his ultimate concession and by fixing with him the final terms of reunification. The surprise and irritation of Kohl's Western allies was expected and desired in order to emphasize the Soviet leader's diplomatic triumph. As Andrei Grachev pointed out to us, France and Britain had counted on the USSR to stop, or at least slow down, reunification; they themselves, meanwhile, did very little and finally dropped the Soviets.[48] Anatolli Cherniaev recounts the same bitterness. After having said that France and England wanted to hold back the course of events "through Gorbachev's hands," he adds they had "underestimated Gorbachev's capacity to adapt himself to the realities."[49]
Even if the German-Soviet treaty "on partnership and cooperation" was only formally signed in the fall, after reunification, its terms were set during the Kohl-Gorbachev summit in July. It is useful to cite one of them: "If one of the two parties is the object of an attack, the other side will not
[47] The direct costs assumed by the German state in compensation and indemnities given to the USSR and other CMEA is estimated at DM 20 billion, whereas they had to invest DM zoo billion per year up to 1995 in the reconstruction of the GDR. See Schütze, "Les aspects extérieurs de la réunification allemande."
[48] Second interview with Andrei Grachev, Paris, 27 February 1995.
[49] Cherniaev, Shest' let s Gorbachevym, p. 310.
furnish the aggressor military aid nor any other form of support."[50] Taken at its letter, this clause could be interpreted as ensuring German neutrality even in case of conflict between the USSR and NATO. Only one year earlier, it would have provoked enormous political commotion in the West. But with the Cold War ended, and Germany having just done so much for NATO, the specter of Rapallo seemed much less menacing.
The prospect of a close and promising relationship with Germany obviously was not the only compensation which Gorbachev obtained for lifting his objection to its full membership in NATO. There were others, and of all kinds. Most of them had already been offered to him before this summit in the Caucasus, either by Kohl or by his Western allies. Several of them were essentially designed to permit him to save face on what had been the main preoccupations of his foreign policy.
The most recent had come at the NATO summit which had taken place in London in early July. At it, a declaration was adopted announcing the alliance's intention to emphasize, from then on, its political, rather than military, component, and the beginning of a revision of its "forward defense" doctrine. The declaration also accepted the institutionalization of the CSCE and proposed measures to this effect. However, there was no question of the CSCE being called on in the future to replace NATO.
Already a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty, the Federal Republic solemnly pledged that a unified Germany would renounce the possession of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and confirmed as definitive the existing external borders of the two Germanys.
It was on the military level that the concessions obtained by the USSR were most tangible. Kohl agreed that the armed forces of a united Germany would not exceed 370,000 men; the West German Bundeswehr alone had over half a million men under arms at the time. The measure meant a 40 percent reduction of the forces then in place in both parts of Germany. So that Kohl's obligation would not seem to be a restriction imposed on the sovereignty of the new German state, the Kohl-Gorbachev agreement indicated that it should be formulated and take force in the framework of the future multilateral treaty on the reduction of conventional forces in Europe, then being negotiated in Vienna. Kohl accepted that the Soviet troops stationed in the GDR
[50] "Traité entre la République fédérale d'Allemagne et l'Union des républiques socialistes soviétiques sur les relations de bon voisinage, le partenariat et la cooperation," Politique étrangère, 1, 1991.
would remain on German soil for a period of "three to four years" (that imprecisely) and at Germany's expense. It was also agreed that Germany would finance the construction of housing in the USSR for the repatriated soldiers.
Finally, Chancellor Kohl pledged that no NATO installations and no foreign forces or nuclear weapons (under U.S. control) would be deployed on the territory of the GDR. On this issue, Kohl's assurances were stricter and went somewhat further than what NATO had been willing to concede. They gave rise to tensions between the Federal Republic and its allies before the finalization of the accords reached in the framework of the "2 plus 4" conference, of which the last meeting took place in Moscow on September 12. The USSR had therefore obtained a denuclearized and neutral former GDR.
To the Soviet military and the conservatives, Gorbachev could claim that, on the military level, NATO would not emerge strengthened in any way from reunification, and would even be somewhat weakened by the reductions imposed on the Bundeswehr .
However, as far as it was concerned, the USSR was to emerge from German reunification dramatically weakened, both militarily and politically. The terms of German unity spelled the end of the Warsaw Pact and of the Soviet military presence in Eastern Europe.
The Caucasus summit was Gorbachev's last foreign policy triumph. One can understand why, contrary to those which preceded it, the summit did nothing to strengthen his political position within the USSR.
Chapter Fourteen
The Agony and the End of the Warsaw Pact
There is no question, therefore, of dissolving the Warsaw Treaty Organization in the course of the next several years. If, as everything would lead us to believe, its military importance is diminishing, its political role remains.... But this treaty is above all important as a tool for restructuring European policy, for East-West rapprochement, and for regulating arms reductions....
Sergei Karaganov (1990)[1]
One of the greatest illusions of the Gorbachev leadership and its reformist advisers was to believe that the Warsaw Pact could survive the loss or diminution of power by the East European Communist Parties. As we have seen over the course of the preceding chapters, from the summer of 1989 onward, although the Soviet leaders accepted and even favored an evolution of the region's regimes and of "renovated" socialism into ever more uncertain directions, the only constant rigidity in their stated position and the only condition they made was the continued adherence of these countries to the international organizations which linked them to the USSR, first and foremost among them being the Warsaw Pact.
They were convinced that the flexibility and tolerance they had shown toward the domestic evolution of these countries were the best guarantees for the future and the preservation of the alliance. One could even say that their restraint in the face of what they considered to be dangerous excesses is explained by their desire not to mortgage the Pact's future, to which they attached the greatest importance. It may be recalled that the Bogomolov institute's report of early 1989, which had presented the most pessimistic scenarios concerning the future of the East European regimes, and which had even then envisaged a form of Finlandization
[1] Sergei Karaganov, "Les problèmes de la politique européenne de l'URSS," La Vie internationale, 7, July 1990, pp. 75–83.
for the states of the region, considered the maintenance of the Warsaw Pact as its principal characteristic. It saw in this a minimal recognition of the USSR's most legitimate geopolitical interests as a matter of course—and even more so if Moscow was prepared to accompany the inevitable process of change in these countries.
The Soviet leaders' certainty did not rest simply on incorrect political calculations. As we have seen, they had demanded and received a formal guarantee from all of the new leaders who took power in Eastern Europe in 1989, that they would respect the international obligations of their countries toward the USSR. The freedom to act which these new leaders had acquired on the domestic level was so unexpected that the Soviet demand seemed a small price for them to pay.
In his speech before the European Parliament on December 20, 1989, Eduard Shevardnadze stressed that "it is significant that all of these countries have confirmed their obligations as allies, at the heart of the Warsaw Pact."[2] He saw in it a guarantee for the preservation of stability in Europe.
It is easy to understand Soviet insistence on the preservation of the Warsaw Pact. At the risk of being repetitive, let us recap the main reasons. In addition to being the USSR's main structure for membership in Europe, it was one of the essential attributes of its international power. In European affairs, it ensured a certain symmetry between the Soviets' strategic position and that of the United States. It was also the framework and principal instrument of its political weight in Europe and in the negotiations concerning the European military balance and its political future.
Preventing German reunification, and then its integration into NATO, had been one of the USSR's major attempts to save the Pact. It was not the only one. In fact, even after accepting Germany's membership in NATO—and although their hopes were singularly reduced as a result—the Soviet leaders did not, as a result, renounce saving the Pact. However, the problems did not only come from Germany.
Soviet Military Withdrawals in Order to Save the Pact
Without calling into question the existence of the Warsaw Pact, Vaclav Havel, shortly before he became president of Czechoslovakia, had clearly
[2] Pravda, 20 December 1989.
signalled to Moscow his intention to obtain the withdrawal of Soviet troops from his country. He had at first stated that the withdrawal should be part of the process of conventional forces reductions in Europe and be synchronized with it. Therefore, he was taking a position that was in perfect accord with that of the Soviet Union. He was, however, to change his position very rapidly. Following the Velvet Revolution, several mass demonstrations took place demanding the immediate and complete withdrawal of the 75,000 Soviet troops. Havel's advisers pointed out to him that the introduction of Soviet troops in 1968 had had nothing to do with the military balance in Europe and that, in any case, they were not deployed on its Western borders.
Beyond that, the presence of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia was based on bilateral agreements between Prague and Moscow and had never been the subject of multilateral accords made in the framework of the Warsaw Pact. Foreseeing the problems that could result from this situation, the Soviet authorities had rushed emissaries to Prague at the beginning of December 1989—after the Velvet Revolution had begun but before the change of regimes—charged with renegotiating the status of Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia to place them in the Warsaw Pact framework.[3] Nothing could be concluded before the fall of the regime. The Soviets came back to the issue when the new authorities in Prague asked to negotiate the troop withdrawal. For nearly two weeks, they insisted on having the negotiations center on the status of the troops, rather than on their complete withdrawal. They were ready for a partial withdrawal, but demanded that a complete withdrawal be part of negotiations with NATO and be eventually compensated by equivalent reductions in U.S. in Western Europe. Prague was obliged to threaten Czechoslovakia's unilateral withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact for Moscow to accept its position. On January 15,1990, official bilateral talks to negotiate the modalities of a Soviet troop "withdrawal" began.
In order to facilitate negotiations with the Soviets, the new Czech foreign minister, Jiri Dienstbier, had asked the U.S. administration as of late December 1989, through semiofficial, confidential channels, to propose lower ceilings on U.S. and Soviet troops in Europe in the framework of the Vienna talks; he suggested the numbers be reduced by at
[3] Interview with Zdenek Mateika (Czechoslovak deputy minister of Foreign Affairs and general secretary of the Warsaw Pact's consultative political committee in 1990), Prague, 27 April 1992.
least 75,000 men.[4] The United States had previously proposed a ceiling of 275,000 troops for each side. In January 1990, shortly after the Czechoslovak request, Washington altered its position and suggested a ceiling of 195,000 men, respectively, in Central Europe, while asking to be allowed to keep 30,000 more outside of this zone.[5] At first, the Soviets insisted on the principle of symmetry and equality in the ceilings. But they rapidly changed their minds. Against the backdrop of problems that were beginning to loom with the other allies, and especially with Germany, the American proposition had the value, in the context, of giving legitimacy to the preservation of a Soviet military presence in Eastern Europe.
On February 26, 1990, only a bit more than a month after negotiations had officially begun, an accord was reached between the USSR and Czechoslovakia. Despite objections from the military, who invoked logistical problems, particularly that of finding housing for the officers and soldiers in the USSR (which did in fact prove to be very serious), Shevardnadze was able to speed up the negotiations and an accord was concluded under which the withdrawal was to be completed by June 1991. The Czech side had insisted that the departure be completed before the end of 1990, and it took Gorbachev's personal intercession with Havel for the time period to be prolonged by six months. The Czechoslovak demands were met; and ironically they were met exactly in order to preserve the future of the Warsaw Pact.
In Hungary, even before 1989, the government had been conducting discreet negotiations with its Soviet counterpart aimed at obtaining, initially, a partial withdrawal of the 50,000 Soviet troops stationed on Hungarian soil. From 1989 onward, with the prospect of free elections looming and the concomitant necessity to improve its image among the Hungarian public, the Communist government in Budapest showed itself to be in a great hurry. In December 1989, all the while trying to present the move as being part of its European conventional disarmament policy, the Soviet defense minister, General Yazov, announced the "unilateral" withdrawal of 6,000 soldiers from Hungary. The Hungarian government, however, thought this insufficient. It asked for and received a complete and very rapid withdrawal. A definitive agreement
[4] Interview with Jaroslav Sedivy (Czechoslovakia's ambassador in France in 1992. He was assigned this mission by J. Dienstbier in 1989), Paris, 9 April 1992.
[5] On January 1, 1990, Soviet troops stationed in Eastern Europe numbered 544,400 men.
was finally announced on March 10, just a few days before the Hungarian elections. The departure of Soviet troops was to begin the next day, and be completed by June 1991, just as in the case of Czechoslovakia. The Hungarian government would have liked a tighter schedule, but it was difficult for a Communist government to demand and obtain more than Vaclav Havel. Here again, the Soviet Union was trying to preserve the future of the Warsaw Pact in the two countries where it evoked the darkest memories.
Beyond the GDR, the only other country of the Pact in which Soviet troops were stationed was Poland. The new Polish government was much less rushed to see them leave, at least as long as the conditions of German reunification were not set. This was even more the case since Helmut Kohl, for electoral reasons, had committed the serious blunder in February 1990 of introducing an element of ambiguity into a definitive recognition of Poland's western borders, proposing to put the question to the future Parliament of a unified Germany. The USSR had immediately and vigorously supported its ally,[6] and Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki publicly underscored "the importance of this alliance for the question of our borders' security."[7]
Despite all of the uncertainties taking shape on the horizon, the commander of the Pact's armed forces, General Lushev, stated in May 1990, on the occasion of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the treaty, that the withdrawal of the troops from Hungary and Czechoslovakia was being made on the basis of bilateral agreements with those two countries and not as a collective decision of the Pact; consequently, "it certainly does not signify the liquidation of its unified armed forces."[8] Affirming his confidence in its future, he forcefully recalled that all of the new leaders of the member states had committed themselves to "pursuing the fulfillment of their countries' obligations to the Pact." At the most, he admitted the necessity of introducing certain elements of democratization which had already been envisaged at the political level for the past year, such as changes in the command structure and the rotation of positions previously reserved for the Soviets alone.
[6] See Horst Teltschik's comments on the matter. See excerpts from his diary in Der Spiegel, 30 September 1991, pp. 118–140; translated for this book by Laure Castin.
[7] Press conference on 21 February 1990 in Warsaw, cited by Hannes Adomeit, " Gorbachev and German Unification: Revision of Thinking, Realignment of Power," Problems of Communism, 39, July–August 1990, pp. 1–23.
[8] "Varshavskomu Dogovoru—35 let" (The Warsaw Pact—35 Years), Krasnaia Zvezda, 13 May 1990.
New Missions for the Warsaw Pact?
Quite rapidly, from early 1990, some political leaders and theoreticians of perestroika understood that the Warsaw Pact no longer had many prospects as a military system, and it was particularly on the importance of its preservation as a political organization that they began to insist. Taking up several arguments he had already formulated in the fall of 1989, Andrei Kortunov, one of the brilliant intellectual reformers at the Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada, enumerated several reasons which he estimated to be the most appropriate for maintaining a reformed and transformed Warsaw Pact, especially as an organization for international political coordination.[9] Among these, he stated that the countries of Eastern Europe, as much as the USSR, were having difficulties gaining acceptance on an equal footing with their partners in Western countries and in West European institutions. Consequently, he wrote that they had an interest in remaining together and collectively negotiating, with more weight and efficacy, the terms of their integration into West European structures and institutions.[10] The argument was certainly very valid from the point of view of Soviet interests. The countries of Eastern Europe, however, did not share this perspective. They rapidly realized that the enormity of the USSR's economic and political problems could only be a burden they would be bringing with them into their negotiations with Western Europe. The group that held to this view was composed of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary, which considered themselves in a better position than the others to rapidly obtain more advantageous conditions. Contrary to what was to happen, the deputy director of the Institute of Europe stated that, in their relations with the West, the countries of the region, "weaker in the political and economic spheres," were "much more in need of the USSR than the USSR of them...."[11]
Bezrukov and Kortunov also affirmed that a "unilateral liquidation" of the Warsaw Pact "could exert a destabilizing influence on East-West relations."[12] In support of their argument they found it useful to rely on an article written by the American alliance theoretician, Stephen Walt,
[9] See M. E. Bezrukov and A. V. Kortunov, "Nuzhna reforma OVD" (The Necessary Reform of the Warsaw Treaty Organization), S Sh A-EPI, 3, March 1990, pp. 30–35.
[10] See M. E. Bezrukov and A. V. Kortunov, "What Kind of an Alliance Do We Need?" New Times (Novoe Vremia), 41, 1989, pp. 7–9.
[11] Karaganov, "Les problèmes de la politique européenne de l'URSS."
[12] Bezrukov and Kortunov, "Nuzhna reforma OVB."
published in the USSR.[13] Here again, the Pact's dissolution could only be more inauspicious for relations between the USSR and the West, and much less so for relations between Eastern Europe and the West. If the United States and NATO could fear a destabilization in Europe as a result of a possible resurgence of conflicts between East European states, these no longer wanted the USSR as the only, or even the main, arbiter of such conflicts.
Nonetheless, there was a certain convergence on this question which emerged between the USSR and Vaclav Havel's Czechoslovakia. Apprehensive about the structural vacuum which would result from the erosion of the Warsaw Pact, Havel became one of the principal advocates, in 1990, of establishing a new European security structure, notably through accentuating a reinforcement of the CSCE. He even stated that the new collective European security system should replace NATO and the Warsaw Pact. However, this seemingly perfect convergence of views rested only on the long-term objective. Czech diplomats did not insist on having the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact be synchronized, and it was more for the replacement of the latter that they were pressing for a new collective European security system. In the meantime, they had no objection to the continued existence of NATO and preferred a united Germany that was integrated into it, rather than being neutral. Such a prospect also raised anxieties in Poland. During a meeting of the foreign ministers of the Pact's member states, held in Prague in March 1990, the Soviet Union received very little support from its allies on this fundamental question. Only Bulgaria abstained from taking a position against German neutrality. Skeptical about the realism of the double membership option for Germany, its "allies" refused to rally behind the USSR on this issue.
Despite the denial from most Soviets, the interests which the USSR and the new regimes in Eastern Europe had in common on which to found an alliance were quite limited and fragile. The common problems in the transition to a market economy were evoked. But, in that respect, the gap between the partners' objectives, and even more so the pace of their transition, was to widen considerably. Moscow also underscored the importance of economic relations between the USSR and the East European states, but those were to collapse rapidly. At the beginning of
[13] Steven (sic ) Walt, "Sokhranenie mira v Evrope: podderzhanie status-kvo" (The Preservation of Peace in Europe: Support for the Status Quo), S Sh A-EPI, 2, February 1990.
1990, a Soviet economist wrote that "one has the growing impression that the Soviet side continues by pure inertia to hold to the point of view that it is essential to preserve CMEA at any price."[14] But the Soviet leaders were to come to terms with CMEA's failure more easily than with that of the Warsaw Pact. Interestingly, it is on the Pact as a political alliance that they seemed to count as the framework for coordinating integration into the Western economic institutions.
For its part, the Soviet military argued that all of the East European armies' equipment was Soviet, that the USSR's partners did not have the hard currency to reequip themselves from the West, and that therefore military cooperation with the Soviet Union remained in their interest.[15] The Soviet military was the slowest to realize that the Pact was rapidly losing its substance.[16]
In fact, one of the main reasons why the new leaders in Eastern Europe accepted not calling in question the Warsaw Pact's existence for several months was out of "recognition" or "gratitude" toward Gorbachev for the tolerance the Soviet Union had shown during the revolutions in the region in 1989. They also hoped thereby not to harm the process of transformations which he had introduced into Soviet internal and foreign policy. This was a very thin basis for preserving an alliance.
Toward Dissolution
The erosion and dissolution of the Pact came about in two stages. First, it was its military organization that was targeted by Eastern Europe's leaders. To reach their objectives on this point more easily, they proposed maintaining the Pact as a political organization, hence seeking to take Gorbachev, who had stressed the importance of this function, at his word.
The new Hungarian government of Jozef Antall, which replaced the reformist Communists in April 1990, demonstrated the greatest haste in wanting a dissolution of the Pact. From the beginning of June, it spoke
[14] A. Nekipelov, "Zavtra—novyi SEV?" (Tomorrow—A New CMEA?), Ekonomicheskoe Sotrudnichestvo Stran-Chlenov SEV, 3, 1990; cited by Marie Lavigne, "Economic Relations of the (Former) CMEA Countries: Past, Present and Future," p. 120 in United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, Economic Integration in Europe and North America, Economic Studies 5 (New York, Geneva: United Nations, 1995).
[15] See the analysis by Colonel Markushin, "Vostochnaia Evropa i my" (Eastern Europe and Us), Krasnaia Zvezda, 26 October 1990.
[16] See also "Sud'ba Varshavskogo Dogovora," Krasnaia Zvezda, 17 June 1990.
openly of the need to do away with its military structures.[17] Nonetheless, at a meeting of the consultative political council (the Pact's supreme organ), which met in Moscow on June 7, Antall did not achieve his goal, and it was Gorbachev who won—at least for the moment, to the satisfaction of the Soviet military. It was agreed, though, that an intergovernmental commission would be created, charged with examining possible paths for its transformation so that it could become a more political than military organization. Having not yet given in on a united Germany's membership in NATO, Gorbachev still needed both a military and a political organization. To his satisfaction, the common declaration at the end of the meeting called for the replacement of the two blocs through a new pan-European security system.[18]
Even after the Kohl-Gorbachev summit in mid-July, the Soviet leaders continued to hold firm to the Pact's existence, and to their desire to see it continue, still hoping for something in exchange for its dissolution. Knowing that the CSCE was a very large organization with unwieldy mechanisms for functioning and that its transformation into a working collective security system would take a lot of time, Soviet authors also introduced formulas other than its institutionalization to replace the threatened Pact. These options were often made without great elaboration, in a last ditch, desperate style. For example, the deputy director of the Institute of Europe took up the (more philosophical than concrete) proposal by Franççois Mitterrand for a European confederation and also suggested the creation of new "pan-European politico-military organs."[19] Two higher officers from the armed forces proposed the establishment of an "European Security Alliance (ESA)" through the fusion of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, and enumerated several duties and sketched out the contours of such an alliance.[20]
If the military organization of the Warsaw Pact was not dissolved at the June 1990 summit, this was not only the result of the East European leaders' deference to Gorbachev. The signals coming from Washington and NATO were not encouraging them in this sense. On the contrary: the West, for very tangible reasons, did not want to see a breakup of the framework in which the Vienna negotiations on conventional arms
[17] See Andrew A. Michta, East Central Europe after the Warsaw Pact (New York: Greenwood Press, 1992), p. 137.
[18] Text in Krasnaia Zvezda, 8 June 1990.
[19] Karaganov, "Les problèmes de la politique européenne de l'URSS."
[20] A. Vladimirov and S. Posokhov, "A European Security Alliance," International Affairs, October 1990, pp. 80–83.
reductions in Europe (begun before the 1989 revolutions) were taking place. It was therefore largely through inertia that the Pact continued to exercise its military functions until the conclusion of the CFE (Conventional Forces in Europe) accords in the fall of 1990. The last phase of negotiations proved to be a very painful experience for the Soviet military and political leaders.
After the Kohl-Gorbachev summit, which foresaw the departure of Soviet troops from Germany, there could no longer be any question of some kind of parallel between the presence of U.S. and Soviet forces in Europe. It was in part to avoid this problem, which became increasingly embarrassing for the Soviets, that the treaty finally left aside, with the exception of Germany, the question of fixing a ceiling on the number of troops; this constitutes one of its main weaknesses.
However, on other issues, the framework and the appearance of symmetry continued to be maintained in the last phase of negotiations. This created a paradoxical situation which clearly demonstrated the Warsaw Pact's anachronism. A tacit alliance emerged between the members of NATO and the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact signatories to have the USSR assume the greatest part of the reductions assigned to the Warsaw Pact as a whole.[21]
In 1989, the USSR accepted the principle of equality in the quantity of armaments possessed by the two alliances and the fixing of ceilings very close to the current level of NATO armaments. This was a considerable concession long sought by NATO, and it was on this basis that the treaty led to withdrawal of 4 percent of NATO stockpiles, compared to 39 percent for the Warsaw Pact.
One can easily understand why, in the second half of 1990, Gorbachev and Shevardnadze had lost much of their interest in these negotiations. The major concessions which they had earlier accepted were designed to bring the two blocs closer politically and to attenuate the division of Europe. The West held two cards with which to press Moscow to conclude the treaty. First, the accord was a necessary condition for the limitation of forces in a future Germany, as agreed between Kohl and Gorbachev in July. Second, the West had made the holding of a CSCE summit conditional on the conclusion of a treaty. It was in the framework of that summit that the institutionalization of the CSCE, so much desired by Moscow, was to be begin. It had also been agreed that
[21] See Douglas L. Clarke, "The CFE Talks: One against Twenty-Two," Report on Eastern Europe, 5 October 1990, pp. 41–44.
the CSCE, and not the two alliances, would be the framework for negotiations which would follow the conclusion of a CFE treaty.
For the Soviet military, less sensitive to political considerations, the treaty was even more difficult to accept for obvious reasons. Given the very small amount of total reductions required of NATO, the Soviet top brass saw it as a unilateral disarmament measure on the part of the USSR. Already at the moment of its conclusion, Gorbachev had begun to move closer to them and to the conservative forces as a result of his domestic difficulties. Therefore, it was concluded by "snatching" it from them. One month after it was signed, on December 20, 1990, Shevardnadze resigned before the mounting tide of criticism from military leaders and conservatives. The implementation of the treaty's terms took place under the greatest possible Soviet reluctance, which had, moreover, begun to show itself even before the signing. When he resigned, Shevardnadze warned against the imminent danger of a dictatorship without specifying if the danger came from Gorbachev, or to him. He made it clearly understood that the Soviet leader had been on the verge of sacrificing him to the conservatives.[22]
In the months preceding Shevardnadze's resignation and the conservative turn in Soviet policy, the Hungarian, Czechoslovak, and Polish leaders had limited themselves to asking for a dissolution of the Pact's military structures and for its transformation into a consultative political organism. A summit meeting of the Pact's member states to that effect was to take place in early November. The USSR had apparently resigned itself to the change, and one of Gorbachev's advisers, G. Batenin, had declared that the Pact's joint command and staff would be dissolved and new political structures put in place.[23] The summit meeting was put off until early December at the Soviets' request; they preferred to wait until after the end of the CSCE conference in November in order to present themselves at the latter in a better institutional position, which became more a matter of appearances. The Warsaw Pact summit did not take place in December, having again been put off at the USSR's request.
During this time, events took a worrying turn. Several weeks after Shevardnadze's resignation, in mid-January 1991, the danger he had described seemed to manifest itself with the brutal repressive measures launched against Lithuania and Latvia, which resulted in several deaths.
[22] See the text of his speech in Izvestiia, 21 December 1990.
[23] See Vladimir V. Kuzin, "Security Concerns in Central Europe," Report on Eastern Europe, 8 March 1991, pp. 25–40.
These events caused a strong reaction in Eastern Europe. A military coup in the USSR was feared, and the East Europeans wondered if the Warsaw Pact would not be used as an instrument or pretext, if not for an attempt to regain control over the region, then at least for efforts to intimidate or exert pressure. The Polish government, reassured by Germany and the guarantees from the "2 plus 4" conference, chose that moment to demand an immediate agreement on the rapid withdrawal of Soviet troops on Polish soil. To that, the commander of those forces, General Dubinin, responded that they would leave when the USSR was ready to go, and "on its conditions."[24]
In this context, the foreign ministers of Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia gathered in Budapest on January 21, 1991. Threatening a unilateral withdrawal of their countries from the Warsaw Pact, they demanded that the summit meeting, already put off several times, be held at the latest by mid-March 1991, and that it proceed with the immediate dissolution of its military structures and fix a date for its complete disbandment. They wanted the disbandment to happen at the latest in March 1992, at which time a CSCE conference was to take place in Helsinki. The date proposed was seen as a final concession to Gorbachev, so that a link could be made between the disappearance of the alliance and a pan-European institutional reinforcement which, in reality, remained weak and symbolic.
Given the danger of unilateral withdrawals which would have considerably damaged the USSR's prestige, Gorbachev was obliged to accept that a meeting of the all the Pact's foreign and defense ministers take place in Budapest on February 25 to dissolve its military structures. In the meantime, he still hoped to convince his partners to keep the Pact as a political organization. However, at the February 25 meeting, it was decided to get rid of the military structures at the end of March and to hold a summit meeting on July 1, 1991, to fix the terms and dates for the complete disbandment of the remaining political structures.
In order to avoid a personal humiliation, Gorbachev did not attend the July 1 summit in Prague where a protocol on the Warsaw Pact's complete dissolution was signed. He was represented by his vice-president, Gennadi Yanaev, who was to preside over the coup against him a month later. Asked via telephone by Russian television on July 1 about the significance of the Prague summit, the defense minister, General Yazov
[24] Znamia Pobeda, 15 January 1991.
(himself one of the main actors in the attempted coup), declared that "the military had nothing to do with this event," and refused to give any interviews.[25]
Some weeks earlier, it was the CMEA which had been officially disbanded. The principal structures and instruments of the USSR's European policy had disappeared. The USSR itself was not to survive very much longer—less than six months, in fact.
For over a year, the dream of European multilateralism along the lines envisaged by Gorbachev and his entourage had gradually dissipated. By continuing to advance it, Gorbachev could depend only on the Western leaders' benevolence rather than on the constantly declining means of the Soviet Union.
[25] Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Soviet Union (Daily Report), 5 July 1991, p. 1.