On November 28, 1989, two weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Kohl, proposed a ten-point program of cooperation between the two Germanies, with an eye toward the eventual unification of the two separate nations into one nation-state. Events moved quickly after the ruling party in East Germany lost the first free elections held in March 1990. A coalition government in East Germany led by Lothar de Maiziere, the head of the East German wing of Helmut Kohl's political party, the Christian Democratic Union, negotiated the terms of the merger with the West Germans, which included complex economic and political measures. The legislative bodies of both Germanies approved the unification treaty in September 1990, and unification officially took place at midnight on October 3, 1990. Kohl's speech reveals the delicate nature of the negotiations, which necessitated balancing complex domestic pressures with geopolitical considerations.
1. Immediate measures are called for as a
Result of events of recent weeks, particularly the flow of resettlers and the huge increase in the number of travellers. The Federal Government will provide immediate aid where it is needed. We will assist in the humanitarian sector and provide medical aid if it is wanted and considered helpful____
The GDR must itself provide travellers with the necessary foreign exchange. We are, however, prepared to contribute to a currency fund for a transitional period, provided that persons entering the GDR no longer have to exchange a minimum amount of currency, that entry into the GDR is made considerably easier, and that the GDR itself contributes substantially to the fund.
Our aim is to facilitate traffic as much as possible in both directions.
2. The Federal Government will continue its cooperation with the GDR in all areas where it is of direct benefit to the people or both sides, especially in the economic, scientific, technological and cultural fields. It is particularly important to intensify cooperation in the field of environmental protection. . . .
We also want to extensively increase telephone links with the GDR and help expand the GDR's telephone network____
[W]e need to take a thorough look at transport and rail systems in the GDR and the Federal Republic in the light of the new situation. Forty years of separation also mean that traffic routes have in some cases developed quite differently. This applies not only to border crossing-points but to the traditional East-West lines of communication in central Europe____
3. I have offered comprehensive aid and cooperation should the GDR bindingly undertake to carry out a fundamental change in the political and economic system and put the necessary measures irreversibly into effect. . . .
We support the demand for free, equal and secret elections in the GDR, in which, of course, independent, that is to say, non-socialist, parties would also participate. The SED's monopoly on power must be removed. The introduction of a democratic system means, above all, the abolition of laws on political crimes and the immediate release of all political prisoners.
Economic aid can only be effective if the economic system is radically reformed. This is obvious from the situation in all Comecon states and is not a question of our preaching to them. The centrally-planned economy must be dismantled.
We do not want to stabilize conditions that have become indefensible. Economic improvement can only occur if the GDR opens its doors to Western investment, if conditions of free enterprise are created, and if private initiative becomes possible. I don't understand those who accuse us of tutelage in this respect. There are daily examples of this in Hungary and Poland which can surely be followed by the GDR, likewise a member of Comecon. . . .
4. Prime Minister Modrow spoke in his government policy statement of a 'contractual community'. We are prepared to adopt this idea. The proximity of our two states in Germany and the special nature of their relationship demand an increasingly close network of agreements in all sectors and at all levels.
5. We are also prepared to take a further decisive step, namely, to develop con-federative structures between the two states in Germany with a view to creating a federation. But this presupposes the election of a democratic government in the GDR. . . .
Previous policy towards the GDR had to be limited mainly to small steps by which we sought above all to alleviate the consequences of division and to keep alive and strengthen the people's awareness of the unity of the nation. If, in the future, a democratically legitimized, that is, a freely elected government, becomes our partner, that will open up completely new perspectives.
Gradually, new forms of institutional cooperation can be created and further developed. Such coalescence is inherent in the continuity of German history. State organization in Germany has nearly always taken the form of a confederation or federation. We can fall back on this past experience. Nobody knows at the present time what a reunited Germany will look like. I am, however, sure that unity will come, if it is wanted by the German people.
6. The development of intra-German relations remains embedded in the panEuropean process, that is to say in the framework of East-West relations. The future architecture of Germany must fit into the future architecture of Europe as a whole. Here the West has shown itself to be the pacemaker with its concept of a lasting and equitable peaceful order in Europe.
In our joint declaration of June this year, which I have already quoted, General Secretary Gorbachev and I spoke of the structural elements of a "common European home." They are, for example:
-Unqualified respect for the integrity and security of each state. Each state has the right freely to choose its own political and social system.
-Unqualified respect for the principles and rules of international law, especially respect for the people's right of self-determination.
-The realization of human rights.
-Respect for and maintenance of the traditional cultures of the nations of Europe.
With all of these points, as Mr Gorbachev and I laid down, we aim to follow Europe's long traditions and help overcome the division of Europe.
7. The attraction and aura of the European Community are and remain a constant feature of pan-European development. We want to and must strengthen them further still.
9. Overcoming the division of Europe and Germany presupposes far-reaching and rapid steps in the field of disarmament and arms control. Disarmament and arms control must keep pace with political developments and thus be accelerated where necessary. . . .
10. With this comprehensive policy we are working for a state of peace in Europe in which the German nation can recover its unity in free self-determination. Reunification-that is regaining national unity-remains the political goal of the Federal government. . . .
The linking of the German question to pan-European developments and East-West relations, as explained in these ten points, will allow a natural development which takes account of the interests of all concerned and paves the way for peaceful development in freedom, which is our objective.
Questions for Analysis
IWhat priorities are evident in Kohl's speech? How did he seek to balance the practical questions of concern to ordinary citizens with the larger political context?
2. What traditions in German history did Kohl refer to in making his case for cooperation, and how did he define the possibility of unity?
3. What references did Kohl make to the larger Cold War context of the division of the two Germanies?
On to their own positions by deposing Ceaujescu. His extensive secret police, however, organized resistance to the coup; the result was nearly two weeks of bloody street fighting in the capital Bucharest. Individual snipers loyal to Ceausescu were still killing passing civilians from rooftops, forcing dangerous efforts to root them out, while the rest of Eastern Europe celebrated Christmas and the new year with new political systems. Ceausescu himself and his wife were seized by populist army units and executed; images of their bloodstained bodies flashed worldwide by satellite television.
Throughout the rest of Eastern Europe, single-party governments in the countries behind what was left of the tattered Iron Curtain—Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia— collapsed in the face of democratic pressure for change. Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union itself, inspired by events in Eastern Europe, the Baltic republics of Lithuania and Latvia strained to free themselves from Soviet rule. In 1990, they unilaterally proclaimed their independence from the Soviet Union, throwing into sharp relief the tension between “union” and “republics.” Gorbachev reacted with an uncertain mixture of armed intervention and promises of greater local autonomy. In the fall of 1991, Lithuania and Latvia, along with the third Baltic state of Estonia, won international recognition as independent republics.
The Collapse of the Soviet Union
While Soviet influence eroded in Eastern Europe, at home the unproductive Soviet economy continued to fuel widespread ire. With the failure of perestroika—largely the result of a lack of resources and an inability to increase production—came the rise of a powerful political rival to Gorbachev, his erstwhile ally Boris Yeltsin. The reforming mayor of Moscow, Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian Federation—the largest Soviet republic—on an anti-Gorbachev platform in 1990. Pressure from the Yeltsin camp weakened Gorbachev’s ability to maneuver independent of reactionary factions in the Politburo and the military, undermining his reform program and his ability to remain in power.
The Soviet Union’s increasingly severe domestic problems led to mounting protests in 1991, when Gorbachev’s policies failed to improve—indeed diminished—the living standard of the Soviet people. Demands increased that the bloated government bureaucracy respond with a dramatic cure for the country’s continuing economic stagnation. Gorbachev appeared to lose his political nerve, having first ordered and then canceled a radical 500-day economic reform plan, at the same time agreeing to negotiations with the increasingly disaffected republics within the union, now clamoring for independence. Sensing their political lives to be in jeopardy, a group of highly placed hard-line Communist party officials staged an abortive coup in August 1991. They made Gorbachev and his wife prisoners in their summer villa, then declared a return to party-line orthodoxy in an effort to salvage what remained of the Soviet Union’s global leverage and the Communist party’s domestic power. The Soviet citizenry, especially in large cities like Moscow and Leningrad, defied their self-proclaimed saviors. Led by Boris Yeltsin, who at one point mounted a tank in a Moscow street to rally the people, they gathered support among the Soviet republics and the military and successfully called the plotters’ bluff. Within two weeks, Gorbachev was back in power and the coup leaders were in prison.
Ironically, this people’s counterrevolution returned Gorbachev to office while destroying the power of the Soviet state he led. Throughout the fall of 1991, as Gorbachev struggled to hold the union together, Yeltsin joined the presidents of the other large republics to capitalize on the discontent. On December 8, 1991, the presidents of the republics of Russia, Ukraine, and Byelorussia (now called Belarus) declared that the Soviet Union was no more: “The USSR as a subject of international law and geopolitical reality is ceasing to exist.” Though the prose was flat, the message was momentous. The once-mighty Soviet Union, founded seventy-five years before in a burst of revolutionary fervor and violence, had evaporated nearly overnight, leaving in its wake a collection of eleven far from powerful nations loosely joined together as the Commonwealth of Independent States. On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned and left political life, not pushed from office in the usual way but made irrelevant as other actors dismantled
RUSSIAN TANKS IN RED SQUARE NEAR THE KREMLIN. Boris Yeltsin convinced many in the military not to support the coup of August 1991, ensuring the failure of the plotters, and hastening the collapse of the Soviet Union.
World History
