Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989. Kristina Spohr
Moscow – sandwiched between a reforming Poland in the East, its capitalist German rival in the West and an ever more liberal and open Hungary further south.
Initially, as Kárpáti had promised, Hungarian border guards did detain East German ‘fugitives’ at those first de-fenced sections near border checkpoints. The Iron Curtain seemed to be holding. But, as news got out and especially after seeing the images of Horn and Mock on 27 June, people felt increasingly emboldened. And so, as the weeks wore on, the so-called ‘green border’ (the dismantled sections farther away from the crossings and therefore less thoroughly patrolled) offered better opportunities for escapees. By August some 1,600 East Germans had successfully taken this route to reach the West.[41]
The Honecker regime did its level best to keep all this out of the papers and off the TV. But it was too late. East Germans had got the message: Hungary was their gateway to freedom.
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Hungary’s simmering international crisis was also the top item on the agenda when Gorbachev met Kohl in Bonn on 12 June 1989 for his first state visit to the FRG since he took office.[42] ‘We are watching the developments in Hungary with great interest,’ the chancellor declared. ‘I told Bush that as far as Hungary is concerned, we are acting on the basis of an old German proverb: let the church remain in the village. It means that the Hungarians should decide themselves what they want, but nobody should interfere in their affairs.’ Gorbachev agreed: ‘We have a similar proverb: you do not go to somebody’s monastery with your charter.’ They both laughed. ‘Beautiful folk wisdom,’ exclaimed Kohl.
Then the Soviet leader became more sombre. ‘I am telling you honestly – there are serious shifts under way in the socialist countries. Their direction originates from concrete situations in each country. The West should not be concerned about it. Everything moves in the direction of a strengthening of the democratic basis.’ Here was Gorbachev’s endorsement of socialist renewal on a national level. But he also issued a guarded warning to Kohl, mindful of pressures on the chancellor to offer financial support to opposition groups in the Soviet bloc. ‘Every country decides on its own how it does it. It is their internal affair. I think you would agree with me that you should not stick a pole into an anthill. The consequences of such an act could be absolutely unpredictable.’
Rather than get into that argument, Kohl simply said that there was ‘a common opinion’ in the USSR, the USA and the FRG that ‘we should not interfere with anybody’s development’. But Gorbachev wanted to underline his point. If anyone tried to destabilise the situation, he said, ‘it would disrupt the process of building trust between the West and the East, and destroy everything that has been achieved so far.’[43] Next day, 13 June, he and Kohl signed no less than eleven agreements expanding economic, technological and cultural ties and a joint declaration affirming the right of peoples and states to self-determination – a significant step, especially from the German perspective.[44]
Yet the ‘Bonn Declaration’ was much more. It was the centrepiece of a state visit whose primary importance for the West Germans was the symbolic reconciliation of two nations whose brutal struggle had left Germany and Europe divided. It defined what both deemed to be a new and more promising phase in Soviet–West German relations. This was reflected in the conclusion expressing ‘the deep, long-cherished yearning’ of the two peoples ‘to heal the wounds of the past through understanding and reconciliation and to build jointly a better future’.[45]
Gorbachev and Kohl: A toast to peace and understanding
Buoyed up by the achievement and the atmosphere, the two men really bonded over the course of three days. They talked in private on a total of three separate occasions. And in contrast to the usually stilted meetings between a Western leader and a communist, they developed the confidence to exchange very candid assessments of their ‘mutual friends’. Both of them respected Jaruzelski; both were keen to support Poland’s transformation under his leadership and also Hungary’s reform course, as long as the latter was not spinning out of control. Each of them had problems with the diehard socialist regime of Erich Honecker, and neither could stand Nicolae Ceaușescu. In Kohl’s opinion the old dictator had plunged his country into ‘darkness and stagnation’; Gorbachev called Romania ‘a primitive phenomenon’, akin to North Korea, ‘in the centre of civilised Europe’.[46]
As human beings they also developed a real closeness, sharing childhood memories and reflecting on their families’ wartime sufferings: ‘There is not a single family’ in either country, said Kohl quietly, ‘whom the war did not touch’.[47] He told Gorbachev that his government saw the visit as marking nothing less than ‘the end of hostilities between Russians and Germans, as the beginning of a period of genuinely friendly, good neighbourly relations’. He added that ‘these are words supported by the will of all the people, by the will of the people who greet you in the streets and squares’. Without doubt, this was another striking feature of the visit. Gorbachev had been welcomed ecstatically in West Germany – the little Rhineland towns, as much as the Ruhr steelworks he visited, were all mobbed with people shouting ‘Gorby, Gorby.’ The conversation between the leaders became increasingly intimate. ‘I like your policy, and I like you as a person,’ confessed Kohl; ‘let’s communicate more often, let’s call each other on the phone. I think we could accomplish many things ourselves without delegating to the bureaucracies.’ Gorbachev agreed: he felt that mutual trust was growing ‘with every meeting’.[48]
On their last evening, after a long and relaxed dinner in the Chancellery bungalow, Kohl and Gorbachev, with only a translator in tow, wandered into the park and down the steps to the Rhine. There they sat on a low wall, chatting occasionally to passers-by, and gazing at the Siebengebirge hills beyond. Kohl never forgot this moment. The two men imagined a comprehensive reordering of Soviet–German relations to be codified in a ‘Grand Treaty’[49] that would open new perspectives for the future. But Kohl warned that it was impossible as long as Germany remained divided. Gorbachev was unmoved: ‘The division is the result of a logical historical development.’ Kohl did not let go. On that balmy night, in a haze of wine and goodwill, he sensed a not-to-be-missed opportunity. Pointing to the broad, steadily flowing Rhine, the chancellor mused: ‘The river symbolises history. It’s nothing static. Technically you can build a dam … But then the river will overflow and find another way to the sea. Thus it is with German unity. You can try to prevent unification, in which case we won’t experience this in our lifetimes. But as certainly as the Rhine flows towards the sea, as certainly German unity will come – and also European unity.’
Gorbachev listened and this time he did not demur. That evening on the bank of the Rhine, so Kohl thought looking back, was truly a turning point in Gorbachev’s thinking and also in their whole relationship. As they parted the two men hugged each other. An unlikely combination, perhaps: the stocky Kremlin leader and the massive, six-foot four, 250-pound chancellor. But the feeling was real: a political friendship had been born.What’s more, for Gorbachev West Germany had become what he called Moscow’s ‘major foreign partner’ – after the United States – and was therefore playing nothing less than a ‘global role’.[50]
Kohl could now bask in the glow of hugely successful state visits in quick succession from each of the superpower leaders – Bush and Gorbachev. He told the press exultantly: ‘within three weeks the two most powerful men from two different systems visited Germany. This new era brings new responsibilities to Germany’, and also, he added, ‘for peace’.[51]
Gorbachev’s evaluation of the summit was also warm