1989- The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe Page 36

  25. For Socialist Unity Party (SED) Politburo assessments of protests in Leipzig and elsewhere, see IV 2/2.039/317, Büro Krenz, SAPMO. For more on October 9, see Günter Hanisch et al., eds., Dona nobis pacem: Fürbitten und Friedensgebete Herbst ’89 in Leipzig (Berlin: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 1990); Martin Janowski, Der Tag, der Deutschland veränderte: 9. Oktober 1989 (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2007); Reiner Tetzner, Leipziger Ring: Aufzeichnungen eines Montagsdemonstranten Oktober 1989 bis 1. Mai 1990 (Frankfurt: Luchterhand, 1990). For an insightful journalistic account, suggesting that Honecker was considering a “Chinese solution” in Berlin on October 7–8, 1989, as well as in Leipzig, see Cordt Schnibben, “Chinesische Lösung,” Der Spiegel 51, December 18, 1989, 42–44.

  26. Hans-Hermann Hertle, Der Fall der Mauer: Die unbeabsichtigte Selbstauflösung des SED-Staates (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1996), 114–15; see also Gieseke, Mielke-Konzern, 257.

  27. Interview with Pfarrer Christian Führer, in Ekkehard Kuhn, Der Tag der Entscheidung: Leipzig, 9. Oktober 1989 (Berlin: Ullstein, 1992). See also Christian Führer, Und wir sind dabei gewesen (Berlin: Ullstein, 2009); Jürgen Grabner, Christiane Heinze, and Detlef Pollack, Leipzig im Oktober (Berlin: Wichern-Verlag, 1990); Uwe Thaysen, “Wege des politischen Umbruchs in der DDR: Der Berliner und der Dresdner Pfad der Demokratiefindung,” in Berlin, ed. Karl Eckart and Manfred Wilke (Berlin: Duncker and Humblot, 1998), 69–90, an interesting article in which Thaysen discusses the difference between the protest movement of Saxony and that of Berlin; see also Eckhard Jesse, ed., Friedliche Revolution und deutsche Einheit: Sächsische Bürgerrechtler ziehen Bilanz (Berlin: Links, 2006).

  28. Reported on the ARD channel’s news program Tagesschau, October 8–9, 1989 (ARD-NDR Videoarchiv, Hamburg). Journalists who had tried to film at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin days earlier were told that it was now a closed zone and they could not film. See also the biographical information page on Siegbert Schefke at http://www.chronik-der-wende.de.

  29. The full story of why that night did not produce the German Tiananmen Square remains to be investigated. A good place to start would be the local archives, not only in Leipzig, but also in the capital of Saxony, Dresden. On a visit to the Sächsisches Hauptstaatsarchiv in Dresden, I found Abt. Sicherheit, A 13155–13157, 60 20 00 20, Lageberichte Oktobertage 1989, Okt./Nov. 1989 and A 13680, Sicherheitspolitik, Einschätzungen, 1987–89, to be helpful; similar documents exist in the Sächsisches Staatsarchiv Leipzig. I am grateful to Thoralf Handke, Bestandsreferent für Parteien und Massenorganisationen, for help during my visit. See also the memoirs of Wjatscheslaw Kotschemassow, Meine letzte Mission (Berlin: Dietz, 1994), 169, where he claims that he was responsible for telling Soviet troops in the region to stay in their barracks, but this claim still needs independent confirmation.

  30. Gorbachev’s obvious criticism of Honecker in front of the other Politburo members—“he who comes late will be punished by life”—did not escape their notice. Rather, it made them aware that Moscow was giving them a mandate for change. See “Из беседы М.С. Горбачева с членами Политбюро ЦК СЕПГ,” October 7, 1989, МГ, 209–14; an English translation is available in the briefing book for the “End of the Cold War in Europe, 1989 Conference,” document 57, Musgrove, Saint Simons Island, Georgia, May 1–3, 1998 (hereafter GC, for Georgia Conference). The “asshole” comment appears in the Russian volume, albeit with a few key letters missing (“Из дневника А.С. Черняева,” October 9–11, 1989, МГ, 215–16), and also in GC. See also the footage from the fortieth-anniversary celebrations broadcast in episode 23 of the CNN Cold War series and Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 1),” Journal of Cold War Studies 5, no. 4 (Fall 2003): 201.

  31. See the footage of the Tagesschau from October 9–10, 1989, available at the ARD-NDR Videoarchiv, Hamburg.

  32. Kowalczuk and Sello, Für ein freies Land, 321–24; biographical information about Jahn, Radomski, and Schefke, available at http://www.chronik-der-wende.de. For more information on East German dissident history, see Erhard Neubert, Geschichte der Opposition in der DDR 1949–1989 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1997).

  33. See the footage of Tagesthemen, October 10, 1989, available at the ARD-NDR Videoarchiv, Hamburg.

  34. Tom Sello, interview with author, August 30, 2006, Berlin.

  35. Timothy Garton Ash terms this the “crucial breakthrough” that made the East German revolution possible; see his In Europe’s Name: Germany and the Divided Continent (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 345.

  36. Tucker, “China as a Factor.”

  37. Chinese scholar Tao Wenzhou, paraphrased in Olav Njølstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation (London: Frank Cass, 2004), xvii–xviii.

  38. Schnibben, “Chinesische Lösung,” 44.

  39. See Njølstad, The Last Decade of the Cold War, xvii; see also Geir Lundestad, “The European Role at the Beginning and the End of the Cold War,” in The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Conflict Escalation to Conflict Transformation, ed. Olav Njølstad (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 60–79.

  40. For earlier eras in which independent West German initiative mattered to the superpowers, see the initial chapters of my Dealing with the Devil (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). On the friction that Willy Brandt’s independence caused with the Western allies, see my “The Frailties of Grand Strategies: A Comparison of Détente and Ostpolitik,” in Nixon in the World: American Foreign Relations, 1969–1977, ed. Fredrik Logevall and Andrew Preston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 146–65.

  41. See Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War: An Insider’s Account of US Policy in Europe, 1989–1992 (Washington, DC: Wilson Center, 1997), 6; Jack F. Matlock Jr., Autopsy on an Empire: The American Ambassador’s Account of the Collapse of the Soviet Union (New York: Random House, 1995), 183. For a broader overview of U.S. foreign policy in the twentieth century and the various transitions between administrations, see Robert Schulzinger, US Diplomacy since 1900 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  42. Comment made in an on-air discussion of his book: Paul Light, A Government Ill Executed (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), in “Massive Reorganization Awaits New President,” National Public Radio, July 27, 2008; transcript available at http://www.npr.org.

  43. Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Touchstone, 1996), 460.

  44. Note on “U.S.-Soviet Relations,” February 1989, box 108, folder 2, 8c monthly files, series 8, James A. Baker III Papers, Mudd Library, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ (hereafter BP); Cheney and Shevardnadze quoted in James A. Baker with Thomas A. DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War, and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995), 70–75. Also in February, Jack Matlock cabled his estimate of what the next four years would hold for Soviet foreign policy: “… its external policy is more likely to resemble a sulk in the corner more than a rampage through the neighborhood.” See “Amembassy Moscow to Secstate Washdc,” February 13, 1989, document circulated as part of the Princeton conference, March 29–30, 1996.

  45. At the meeting in New York in December 1988, Gorbachev had suggested the former USSR ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, as a confidential back-channel contact. Bush felt that it would be appropriate to tap Dobrynin’s old sparring partner Kissinger in response, although he had misgivings. As he commented in George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), 26: “I was wary. I wanted to be sure we did not pass the wrong signals to Moscow, with some in our Administration saying one thing while others were conducting secret negotiations that might be sending out contradictory signals. Although helpful, back channels can leave critical people in the dark on either a forthcoming policy
decision or on the details of some conversation between the President and a foreign leader.” On the role of back channels during Kissinger’s own time in office, see (to name just a few) William Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Jussi Hanhimäki, The Flawed Architect: Henry Kissinger and American Foreign Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Logevall and Preston, Nixon in the World; Sarotte, Dealing with the Devil; Jeremi Suri, Henry Kissinger and the American Century (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007).

  46. “Основное содержание беседы с Г. Киссинджером (США) 16 января 1989 г.,” 4, conversation between Kissinger and Yakovlev, Russian and East European Archival Documents Database, National Security Archive. Some short excerpts from the next day’s conversation between Gorbachev and Kissinger were circulated as “Record of Main Conversation between M.S. Gorbachev and H. Kissinger,” document 17, in GC, 4.

  47. Fax from Henry Kissinger, Kissinger Associates, New York, January 21, 1989, 9:05 a.m., titled “Meeting with Gorbachev—January 17, 1989, 12:00–1:20 p.m.,” folder 1, box 108, 8c monthly files, series 8, BP.

  48. In the past the roles had been reversed, and Baker had to apologize to Kissinger. See Baker with DeFrank, The Politics of Diplomacy, 22–29, 40; “time-honored” is on 23; the joking response is on 29. On Baker outmaneuvering Kissinger, see Beschloss and Talbott, At the Highest Levels, 45–46.

  49. Letter from Henry A. Kissinger to James A. Baker III, January 24, 1989, folder 49, box 100, 8b correspondence, series 8, BP.

  50. Interestingly, the tension that existed between the Reagan and Bush foreign policy teams is replicated in the historical and memoir writing about the period. Gaddis, a strong admirer of President Reagan, finds it extremely fortunate for U.S. foreign policy that Reagan did not die in the assassination attempt on his life. This would have made Bush president in 1981 instead of 1989. Had that happened, argues Gaddis, Bush’s lack of creativity would have precluded “an American challenge to the Cold War status quo. Bush, like most foreign policy experts of his generation, saw that conflict as a permanent feature of the international landscape.” Gaddis compliments Reagan for thinking that it was not; see Gaddis, The Cold War, 188. In contrast, Bush’s biographer titles the chapter in which Bush becomes president “Cleaning Up Reagan’s Mess”; see Timothy Naftali, George H.W. Bush (New York: Times Books, 2007), chapter 3. See also Jack F. Matlock Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House, 2004); on Reagan in particular, see Paul Lettow, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2005).

  51. On the conversation with Kohl: “Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Generalsekretär Gorbatschow, Bonn, 12. Juni 1989,” document 2, DESE, 281. Both the federal chancellery and Gorbachev have released records of this conversation; they duplicate each other on these points, with some minor variations in wording. See “Беседа М.С. Горбачева с Г. Колем один на один,” June 12, 1989, МГ, 156–65. A partial English translation of the Gorbachev Foundation’s notes on this meeting was circulated in GC and is available from the National Security Archive. On the conversation with Mitterrand, this account draws on a Russian summary. Gorbachev chose not to include it in the documents that he released, but an English translation of the document appeared in GC.

  52. Garthoff, The Great Transition, 376.

  53. Scowcroft’s view is summarized in Michael Beschloss and Strobe Talbott, At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the Cold War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), 45; Garthoff, The Great Transition, 377; Gates, From the Shadows, 460.

  54. Baker with DeFrank, Politics of Diplomacy, 68.

  55. Gates, From the Shadows, 460. Gates’s statement about the source of ideas, if accurate, is useful for historians because the BPL and Baker have released materials on 1989–90, and most members of the inner circles have written accounts, including the useful Philip Zelikow and Condoleezza Rice, Germany Unified and Europe Transformed: A Study in Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), which was based on extensive documentation. What is not available are more standard governmental papers (although FOIA requests have brought a number into the public domain), but if Gates is right, these materials will be of secondary importance.

  56. See “Vermerk des Bundesministers Genscher über das Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Ministerpräsident Németh und Außenminister Horn, Schloß Gymnich, 25. August 1989,” document 28, DESE, 378.

  57. “Telephone Call from Helmut Kohl, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, June 23, 1989, 7:26 a.m.–7:42 a.m. EDT, The Oval Office,” NSC Pres. Telcons, 6/23/89, FOIA Request 1999-0393-F, BPL. The German note taker, or perhaps translator, of the same conversation was more cautious, summarizing Bush’s comments as “One should avoid making mistakes and possibly spending money for things that do not achieve anything for the population.” See also “Telefongespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Präsidenten Bush, Bonn, 23.06.89, 13.30 bis 13.50 Uhr,” document 10, DESE, 315.

  58. Point 13 in telegram, “Amembassy Warsaw to Secstate Washdc,” June 27, 1989, copy distributed to Cold War International History Project Paris Conference, The End of the Cold War in Europe, June 15–17, 2006 (hereafter CWIHPPC).

  59. “President Bush’s Address to the Polish Parliament,” in Europe Transformed: Documents on the End of the Cold War—Key Treaties, Agreements, Statements, and Speeches, ed. Lawrence Freedman (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 333–35; see especially 334.

  60. Robert Pear, “U.S. Aid for Poland: Long on Incentives, Short on Dollars,” New York Times, November 19, 1989, online. This article points out that the biggest offer of aid, also in November 1989, came from West Germany, which promised $2.2 billion. The lesson of Polish indebtedness was a cautionary one to Havel, soon to be the leader of Czechoslovakia. According to VIA, a Czech news agency, he made remarks to this effect to Hans-Dietrich Genscher: “Havel expressed fear that the loans might be issued, and that he would not be happy if Czechoslovakia’s children were forced in fifteen years to pay back a many billion-crown debt, as was now the case in Poland. Loans should be furnished only for specific investments.” “East European Independent News Agency Report,” July 13, 1989, samizdat, Czechoslovak Documentation Center, Scheinfeld, VIA Collection, copy translated and distributed in PC.

  61. Andrej Paczkowski, The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and Poles from the Occupation to Freedom, trans. by Jane Cave (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 507. For a broader overview of the transition in Eastern Europe, see Piotr S. Wandycz, The Price of Freedom (London: Routledge, 1992).

  62. Andrei Grachev displays this view at various points in his Gorbachev’s Gamble: Soviet Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War (London: Polity Press, 2008).

  63. “Gespräch des Bundeskanzlers Kohl mit Präsident Bush, Bonn, 30. Mai 1989, 17.30 bis 18.30,” document 1, DESE, 272.

  64. The exact numbers of Soviet troops in Germany, together with their dependents, was a matter of some controversy in 1989–90, but was eventually clarified in a treaty between West Germany and the Soviet Union. See “Zum Vertrag zwischen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und der UdSSR über die Bedingungen des befristeten Aufenthalts und die Modalitäten des planmäßigen Abzuges der sowjetischen Truppen aus dem Gebiet der Bundesrepublik Deutschland,” document 59 in Auswärtiges Amt, ed., Deutsche Aussenpolitik 1990/91: Auf dem Weg zu einer europäischen Friedensordnung eine Dokumentation (Bonn: Auswärtiges Amt, April 1991), 231–32. See also Henry Ashby Turner Jr., Germany from Partition to Unification, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 174.

  65. Stephen Szabo, The Diplomacy of German Unification (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 12.

  66. Quoted in GDE, 4:34.

  67. “Proposed Agenda for Meeting with the President, Wednesday, March 8, 1989, 1:30–2:00 p.m.,” folder 6, box 115, 8e White House Meetings and Notes, series 8,
BP.

  68. Pointing out that forward defense “wasn’t the US preference 30 years ago,” he argued that the United States “held to it” because it was critical to the FRG and because “such a conventional defense is only tenable if backed up by a full range of nuclear response.” “JAB [James A. Baker] Notes from 4/24/89 meeting w/FRG FM Genscher & DM Stoltenberg, WDC,” folder 4, box 108, 8c Monthly Files, series 8, BP.

  69. GDE, 4:34.

  70. On the nature of the Thatcher-Gorbachev partnership, see Archie Brown, “The Change to Engagement in Britain’s Cold War Policy: The Origins of the Thatcher-Gorbachev Relationship,” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 3 (Summer 2008): 3–47.

  71. “Record of Conversation between Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher,” September 23, 1989, notes of Anatoly Chernyaev, Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation, copied and translated for GC. I received a copy of the British record of this conversation via FOI; it did not include these comments, but it was redacted. “Prime Minister’s Meeting with Mr. Gorbachev, 24 September 1989,” released by CAB via FOI. See also notes of Anatoly Chernyaev, October 9, 1989, Archive of the Gorbachev Foundation, copied and translated in GC as well. Rumors of Thatcher’s comments seem to have reached Bonn, because in an unusually pointed way, a chancellery official, Peter Hartmann, asked Thatcher’s close aide Charles Powell about her September visit with Gorbachev. Hartmann reported back that Powell evaded giving him any answer. “Vermerk des MD Hartmann, Bonn, 13. Okt. 1989, Betr.: Meine Gespräche in London (FCO and Cabinet Office),” document 61, DESE, 450. See also comments about Thatcher in “Беседа М.С. Горбачева с Вилли Брандтом,” October 17, 1989, МГ, 228–29.

  72. Egon Krenz, “An alle Mitglieder und Kandidaten des Politbüros des ZK der SED,” November 5, 1989, JIV 2/2A/3255, SAPMO. This document summarizes what Jaruzelski told Krenz.