Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [491]
THE FALL OF COMMUNISM IN EASTERN EUROPE IN 1989 AND ITS IMPLICATIONS
In the late summer of 1989 the first signs appeared of the imminent collapse of communism in eastern Europe. Solidarity won the elections in early June in Poland and General Jaruzelski accepted the result: I congratulated him on this when he came to London a few days later. Liberalization proceeded in Hungary, which opened its borders to Austria in September across which flooded East German refugees. The haemorrhage of population from East Germany and demonstrations at the beginning of October in Leipzig led to the fall of Erich Honecker. The demolition of the Berlin Wall began on 10 November. The following month it was the turn of Czechoslovakia. By the end of the year Vaclav Havel, the dissident playwright who had been gaoled in February, had been elected President of Czechoslovakia and the evil Ceauşescus had been overthrown in Romania.
These events marked the most welcome political change of my lifetime. But no matter how much I rejoiced at the overthrow of communism in eastern and central Europe I was not going to allow euphoria to extinguish either reason or prudence. I did not believe that it would be easy or painless to entrench democracy and free enterprise. Some of the liberalizing and liberated countries had stronger traditions of freedom to draw upon than others. But it was too soon to be sure precisely what sort of regimes would emerge. Moreover, central and eastern Europe — still more the Soviet Union — was a complicated patchwork of nations. Political freedom would also bring ethnic disputes and challenges to frontiers, which might have moved several times in living memory. War could not be ruled out.
The welcome changes which were happening had come about because the West had remained strong and resolute — but also because Mr Gorbachev and the Soviet Union had renounced the Brezhnev doctrine. On the continued survival of a moderate, reforming Government in the USSR would depend the future of the new democracies. We had seen in the past — in 1956 in Hungary and 1968 in Czechoslovakia — what happened when democrats took to the streets believing that the West would ultimately step in to help them against the Soviets and then found themselves abandoned. It was too early to assume that the captive nations were permanently free from captivity: their Soviet captors could still turn ugly. It was therefore essential to go carefully and avoid actions which would be deemed provocative by either the Soviet political leadership or the military.
This led directly on to the third consideration — the future of Germany. For nothing was more likely to stir up old fears in the Soviet Union — fears which the hardliners would be anxious to exploit — than the prospect of a reunited, powerful Germany, possibly with renewed ambitions on its eastern flank.
THE GERMAN PROBLEM AND THE BALANCE OF POWER
There was — and still is — a tendency to regard the ‘German problem’ as something too delicate for well-brought-up politicians to discuss. This always seemed to me a mistake. The problem had several elements which could only be addressed if non-Germans considered them openly and constructively. I do not believe in collective guilt: it is individuals who are morally accountable for their actions. But I do believe in national character, which is moulded by a range of complex factors: the fact that national caricatures are often absurd and inaccurate does not detract from that. Since the unification of Germany under Bismarck — perhaps partly because national unification came so late — Germany has veered unpredictably between aggression and self-doubt. Germany’s immediate neighbours, such as the French and the Poles, are more deeply aware of this than the British, let alone the Americans; though the same concern often leads Germany’s immediate neighbours to refrain from comments which might appear insensitive. The Russians are acutely conscious of all this too, though in their case the need for German credit