[Last updated: 17 February 1992] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Are Two Germanies Better Than One? Russo-German Relations, Past, Present and Future by Dr Robert F. Miller Sr Fellow in Political Science, Division of Economics and Politics, RSSS, ANU There have always been several images of Germany in the Russian mind. A Germany of highly intellectual culture, the freedom-loving country of Goethe and Schiller, great musicians, writers, philosophers and natural scientists, who coexisted with a Germany of haughty junkers and generals who nurtured a sense of belonging to an exclusive caste. It is a striking paradox that in the minds of the latter the height of German culture was never translated into an awareness of the integrity of the world and the equality of everyone before the spirit, but it rather turned into a feeling of actual exclusiveness. Amazingly, these men managed to infect the whole nation with that sentiment. "Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles." Germany above conscience, honour, and as it came to pass, above all that is humane. There was yet another image of Germany in the minds of the Russian people. A Germany of hard-working farmers, skilled engineers, and diligent workers. True, whenever the well-known German punctuality was praised it was with a touch of censure and even arrogance. These were seen as signs of a pendantic and bureaucratic mind, something alien to the free and expansive ways of the Russians.1 Introduction These contradictory images of recent vintage were allegorically prefigured in Russian literature over a century ago in the well known novel Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov, in its classic contrast between the diligent German bourgeois Stoltz and his friend the dreamy, ineffectual repentant gentry Oblomov. The sympathy of the author and of most Russian readers--and not only them--is obviously on the side of the nobly intentioned, if rather pathetic eponymous hero.2 The peculiar love-hate relationship between Russia and Germany that first surfaced as far back as the 17th Century has proven to be one of the most durable constants of international politics in Europe ever since. Having been an integral part of the European trade network in the late Middle Ages through the activities of the Hanseatic League, Russia had subsequently entered a two-hundred-year period of isolation (1240-1480) under the so-called 'Tatar yoke'. The result was that she had been cut off from the intellectual and commercial currents of Western civilisation during an especially explosive era of scientific, technological and cultural development. Thus, by the time of Peter the Great's accession to the throne in 1689, Russia was a hermit kingdom, self-consciously isolated from the West-- religiously, culturally and politically. The ruling aristocracy of princes and boyars, whose power Peter would eventually be forced to smash, were an intellectually uninspired lot. According to historian A.P. Shchapov: the level of intellectual growth was the same for the entire population. The level of the boyars' wisdom was no higher than that of the peasants. Of the 142 best-known writers of Old Russia from the eleventh to the seventeenth century, only four or five were boyars or princes; all the others came from the clergy and, in general from the lower classes. The writers of noble origin did not stand out by any special intellectual characteristics.3 Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Clergy regularly reinforced the anti-intellectual and anti-scientific prejudices of the aristocracy by theological arguments demonstrating the alleged spiritual superiority of Russian Orthodoxy and Russian society over the Papist and materialist West. Mathematics and science were condemned as a form of black magic that was not only not necessary, but even harmful, for the moral and material health of purist Russia. Peter, the great reformer, although not particularly intellectually inclined himself, recognised the crucial importance of modern science, technology and culture for the inclusion of Russia in the civilised world and the enhancement of its military, diplomatic and economic performance. He was determined to reduce the influence of the Clergy and the boyars and override their opposition to Western ideas and techniques. Yet there was a certain ambivalence in Peter's attitude towards the West and the scope of its influence on Russia. He had no desire to replace the Orthodox faith with Roman Catholicism or Protestantism, as suggested by some of his most famous correspondents in the West, such as Gottfried von Leibniz.4 Nor was he particularly interested in Western ideas of political reform. In short, Peter was not a consistent 'Westerniser'. He took a highly eclectic and instrumental view of what the West had to offer for the modernisation of Russia, regarding the injection of Western science and technology as a short cut to the front ranks of European power. This strange combination of a sense of material-technological inadequacy and spiritual messianism has continued to characterise Russia's confused attitudes towards the West, and especially towards Germany. The Germans in Russia From the beginning of Peter's reforms of Russian science and education, German scholars and academics occupied a central role. Germans made up by far the largest contingent of Westerners recruited to design and staff Russia's new scientific institutions. The model for the new Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg was the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, not the British Royal Society or the French Academy, because it was more responsive to state control and was expressly dedicated to serving the scientific and practical needs of the state. Indeed, when the St. Petersburg Academy opened its doors in the summer of 1725, thirteen of its original sixteen members were German (two were Swiss--the famous Bernoulli brothers--and one was French).5 Two years later they were joined by the eminent German mathematician Leonhard Euler, whose mathematical genius soon contributed to establishing the reputation of the Russian Academy as a centre of world excellence in the pure sciences. In addition, an unusually large number of the government officials connected with the administration of the Academy were of German origin. In the time of Empress Anne (1730-40) the German connection was in fact strengthened under the growing influence of Baltic Germans. Under the patronage of Anne's favourite, Count Ernst Biron (Buehren), they went even further in Germanicising the intellectual atmosphere of the Academy and reinforced its isolation from the rapidly developing contemporary Russian intellectual life. An inevitable backlash against this German domination occurred during the reign of Empress Elizabeth (1741-61), when native Russian administrators were designated to replace most of the Germans who had dominated the Academy since its founding. One of the early casualties of this change was Leonhard Euler, who, in 1741, accepted a personal invitation from the Prussian Emperor Frederick II to join the Berlin Academy. But it is indicative of the reputation of the Russian Academy that he saw fit to remain on good terms with his St. Petersburg colleagues and continued his scientific collaboration with them as an honorary member. Indeed, with the advent of the distinctly pro-German regime of Catherine the Great (1762-96), Euler returned in triumph to the Russian Academy in 1766. Catherine's favourable attitude toward Germans was reflected not only in her appointment of German scientists, administrators and military officers, but also in her recruitment of German peasants to colonise large tracts of agricultural land in the south and east of Russia. The proportion of German family names among highÐlevel administrators and military commanders of the realm thereafter is striking.6 Most of these families were fully assimilated into Russian society and were baptised in the Orthodox faith. Their absolute numbers probably did not increase after the 18th century, in view of the growing availability of educated Russians. But Germanic influence remained strong until the last days of the tsarist regime, to be repudiated only during World War I, when, for example, the name of St. Petersburg was Slavicised to 'Petrograd' in a burst of patriotic and anti-German fervour--a pattern that would be repeated whenever Russia and Germany found themselves in military conflict. The love-hate relationship was, of course, not confined to the higher levels of state policy. It was also a feature of the Marxist revolutionary movement, in which the German Social-Democratic Party originated by Marx and Engels occupied the position of role model for all aspiring revolutionary Marxist parties. Lenin and Plekhanov regularly sought out the opinions of the leaders of the SPD, such as Karl Kautsky, for advice on policies and strategies for dealing with the Russian Autocracy and on relations with other parties and movements.7 On the other hand, Lenin felt particularly disappointed and betrayed by the alacrity with which Kautsky's SPD and many other parties of the Second International dominated by it abandoned the agreed policy of 'revolutionary defeatism' and the plan to convert the 'imperialist' World War into a revolutionary civil war. By 1918 Kautsky, Lenin's erstwhile mentor in 'proletarian internationalism' had become 'the renegade Kautsky'.8 After the Bolsheviks' seizure of state power, the new Russia's relations with Germany manifested a similar pattern of sinusoidal swings. Lenin's opponents did not let him forget that his return to Russia in the infamous 'sealed train' from Switzerland had been arranged with the complicity of the German Government, and rumours of continuing German subsidies to the Bolsheviks during the war to undermine Russia's war effort were never adequately laid to rest. At the same time, Lenin's acceptance of the German ultimatum at Brest-Litovsk in February 1918 was a bitter pill for the new Soviet leader to swallow and nearly cost him the support of his colleagues, most notably Trotsky and Bukharin. But Lenin's judgment proved to be sound. With the end of the war and the working out of the consequences of the Versailles Peace, the Soviet Union and Germany found themselves once again in each other's arms as victims of ostracism by the victorious Entente powers. The Treaty of Rapallo and the secret military cooperation between the Red Army and the German High Command provided substantial benefits to both sides in the modernisation of their respective armed forces until Hitler's extreme anti-Bolshevism put a stop to the relationship in the early 1930s. At another level, however, Soviet policy was actively engaged in trying to undermine the German Government. The establishment of the Comintern in 1919 as the centre of the world proletarian revolutionary movement initially placed high hopes in the German 'section' of the movement, the KPD, as the true inheritor of the German revolutionary Marxist tradition. Originally it was expected by Lenin and other Comintern leaders that with the victory of the revolution in Germany, the centre of the movement would return to its rightful place in that country--that backward revolutionary Russia was only a temporary resting place for the headquarters of the movement. After a series of failed attempts at revolution in Germany in 1921 and 1923 and in China in 1927, however, the Bolsheviks lost their faith in foreign parties, and the Comintern gradually became a mere appendage of Soviet foreign policy. Moscow's early experiences of postwar politics in Germany had led to certain delusions concerning the possibilities of alliance with nationalist forces in the overthrow of the Weimar Government. Comintern strategist Karl Radek's dalliance with the idea of 'national Bolshevism'--where the KPD was directed to support right-wing nationalist forces engaged in the struggle against Germany's fulfilment of the Versaille terms--was a good example of the persistence of the expectation of a congruence of 'objective interests' between Germany and Russia. This attempt, like most Comintern ventures, was a total failure. German nationalism proved to be not susceptible to Moscow's efforts to channel it, and Bolshevism, national or otherwise, remained anathema to right-wing German nationalists. However, this lesson was never properly learned, and the effort was to be repeated in 1932, when the Comintern ordered the KPD to cooperate with the Nazis against the quaintly termed 'social fascists' of the SPD, who had constituted the only real force in Germany willing and able to mount effective resistance to the Nazis' grab for power. Blinded by the convoluted reasoning of 'historical materialism', with its abstract conceptions of 'objective' and 'subjective' hostility, Stalin and his cohorts could never really distinguish between genuine and false friends and enemies. They were to make the same mistake in China in 1927 and in the de facto alliance with Hitler in August 1939. Stalin's refusal to credit the growing evidence of Hitler's preparations to attack Russia in June 1941 was another sign of this peculiar faith in the objective validity of the German connection. The Russians in Germany There was something to be said for this totally unsentimental Marxist faith in the possibility--indeed, the necessity--of utilising the so-called 'objective laws of historical development' to further the national interests of the Soviet state and the progress of world communism. Stalin proved to be considerably more astute than his onetime Western allies in conceptualising relations with postwar Germany. For sound historical and economic reasons he rejected the 'Morgenthau Plan' put forth by Roosevelt for keeping defeated Germany both rusticated and divided, realising that the intellectual and technical potential of the German people could not be indefinitely suppressed. Instead, he sought to make use of it, beyond mere reparations, for the postwar reconstruction and development of the USSR and world socialism. Nevertheless, Soviet policies towards postwar Germany continued to reflect the historical ambivalence of the RussianÐGerman relationship. In the light of growing East-West tensions and the consequent decision of the three Western allies to integrate the new Federal Republic of Germany into the emerging NATO alliance system, Stalin's offer to trade German unification for neutrality and the implicit enhancement of Soviet influence in all-German domestic and foreign policy was unacceptable to the West. Stalin thereupon proceeded with the implementation of an alternative strategy for German political and economic development in 'his' part of the divided country, the German Democratic Republic. In Wilhelm Pieck and Walter Ulbricht, two loyal stalwarts of the late Comintern era, he had ideal agents for the 'socialist transformation' of Germany. As communists, they had suffered at the hands of their fellow citizens and could be relied upon to carry out Stalin's policies with the necessary punitive enthusiasm. Thus, after an initial period of wholesale transfers of plant and equipment from East Germany to the USSR as reparations for Nazi devastation, Stalin shifted over to a policy of rebuilding the productive potential of 'his' Germans and using it to create a powerful bastion of industrial technology for the entire East European communist Bloc. Walter Ulbricht was a particularly suitable executor of such a policy. His hardline communist orthodoxy and dour nature made him an eloquent symbol of the continuing punishment that was to be inflicted on the German people for their past sins against Russia. At the same time, his evident national pride impelled him to prove to his Muscovite masters that Germans could be leading contributors to the industrial development of the socialist community. Ulbricht was successful--in some ways too successful--in carrying out this mission. East Germany came to be seen as representing tangible proof of the technological progress and disciplined popular commitment that were possible under socialist industrialisation. The GDR became the proverbial 'jewel in the crown' of the international socialist community, the prime demonstration that Soviet-style socialism could 'really work'. But for the post-Stalin Soviet leaders, Ulbricht's success was a two-edged sword. Under the more relaxed internal and international atmosphere of the Khrushchev and early Brezhnev years, he became a Marxian Jeremiah, a kind of bad conscience for the Muscovite leaders, especially when they began to seek accommodation with the West as a way out of the economic and political impasse inherited from Stalin. The relative success of socialist construction in the GDR lent unusual weight to Ulbricht's standing in international communist forums, especially in the absence of alternative figures of orthodox Stalinist authority. Ulbricht's patent distaste for Khrushchev's de-stalinisation campaign and his efforts to reduce overtly coercive practices in intra-Bloc relations was transmuted into nagging reproach after the new policies had backfired in Hungary and Poland in the autumn of 1956. Consequently, Ulbricht was not at all unhappy to see Khrushchev replaced by the seemingly more orthodox regime of Brezhnev and Kosygin in October 1964, and he was a reliable supporter of their early efforts to re-assert Soviet control over the Bloc (or at least its European rump). Perhaps his happiest hour was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. He was among the most enthusiastic supporters, not to say instigators, of the Soviet decision to intervene. However, Ulbricht's hectoring, holier-than-thou attitude finally became unbearable to Brezhnev, too, when he tried to impede Moscow's attempts to overcome the post-1968 isolation of the Soviet Bloc by responding positively to Willy Brandt's 'Ostpolitik'. Ulbricht's fear that the negotiations which ultimately led to major agreements between the USSR and the FRG in 1970 and the first era of detente in Europe had been purchased at the expense of the GDR was not entirely unfounded. It proved to be something of a precedent, by establishing the axiom that when forced to make a choice between the two Germanies, the Soviet Union would opt for the larger one. The GDR essentially had nowhere else to go, and Moscow had no intention of conceding its leaders a veto over Soviet policy on all-European matters. Ulbricht was soon made to pay the price for his obstinacy and ideological rigidity: in 1971, at Soviet insistence, he was pensioned off, with appropriate ceremony and expressions of 'internationalist' gratitude. His replacement, Erich Honecker, was of a similar stripe. He had the same harshly paternalistic attitude toward the government of his people and also the same commitment to making the GDR a showcase of socialist construction. For a time he was more modest in pressing his right to instruct his Soviet masters, but the traditions of German diligence at the workplace and German ideological rectitude in the international socialist movement-- both in contrast to the laxity of their Russian mentors--proved to be in uncomfortable contradiction with what the Russians considered the proper relationship between Moscow and (East) Berlin. By the early 1980s Honecker's words and deeds were making him look increasingly like Walter Ulbricht Mark II. Indeed, the unpleasant realities of the international socialist economy had by this time made tension between the USSR and the GDR almost inevitable. As a result of the arms race and internal, structural features of the 'administrative-command system' of economy shared by the USSR, the GDR and virtually all the other socialist countries, economic growth had all but come to a halt. Under the 'sheltered workshop' conditions prevailing in COMECON, it was natural that the more disciplined and better trained GDR workforce would perform better than--or, more precisely, not as badly as-- their demoralised brothers and sisters in the other countries of 'real socialism'. The advent of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev to the leadership of the CPSU, with his expanding commitment to perestroika, glasnost', democratisation and 'new political thinking', made the temptation for Honecker to revert to the didactic mode of his predecessor virtually insuperable. Moreover, the enunciation by Gorbachev--through his press spokesman Gennady Gerasimov--of the so-called 'Sinatra Doctrine' ('they can do it their way') to replace the infamous 'Brezhnev Doctrine' ('they must do it our way') made Honecker believe that he had carte blanche to carry out his own line on socialist construction--that is, to ignore Gorbachev's strictures on market-oriented economic reforms. Honecker even found it necessary, and politically possible, to ban the importation of reformist literature from the USSR! However, it was Gorbachev's new foreign policies which most seriously alarmed Honecker, particularly Moscow's espousal of the 'common European home' idea. Given the increasing prominence of the FRG in the affairs of the European Community and the rapidly approaching deadline of 31 December 1992 for the next major stage in the economic integration of 'the twelve', Gorbachev's relations with the conservative government of Chancellor Helmut Kohl were receiving special priority in his foreign policy thinking. Just where this left the interests of the GDR was becoming a matter of the utmost urgency for Honecker, and he was not timid in expressing his fears to Gorbachev. The massive exodus in August and September 1989, of East German citizens to the West, after first traversing the erstwhile fraternal territory of Hungary, demonstrated the full impact of the Sinatra Doctrine in action and the hollowness of Honecker's claims to have built a flourishing alternative model of German society. It also greatly increased tensions between East Berlin and Moscow. The stridency of Honecker's reproaches concerning the effects of the changes in Soviet domestic and foreign policy obviously rankled Gorbachev, as Ulbricht's had Brezhev almost two decades earlier. The result was similar: following Gorbachev's direct intervention during a visit to the GDR in October 1989, Honecker was suddenly retired and replaced by a rather colourless apparatchik, Egon Krenz. Significantly, one of Krenz's first acts was to remove the censorship on reformist Soviet periodicals. He also pledged to follow the Soviet lead in reforming the GDR's economy.9 To all intents and purposes, this was to be the swan song of socialism in the GDR. Whether he intended such an outcome or not, Gorbachev evidently no longer cared very much. He had other, bigger fish to fry. In any case, his ability to control events in the former Socialist Commonwealth was suddenly very much in doubt. The Soviet Union on German reunification and European integration At the outset it is worth considering the probability that West European integration and German reunification were issues that Soviet leaders never thought they would seriously have to address in their lifetime. On European integration this belief continued to be held as late as the middle 1980s; on German reunification, as late as the end of 1989! Dr. Heinz Timmermann traces the changes in Soviet attitudes towards the EC and European integration to February 1986 and the 27th Congress of the CPSU, where Gorbachev characterised relations with the EC as second only to those with the United States in Soviet foreign policy and security priorities.10 Timmermann also shows that the FRG was regarded by Moscow as the most important target country for Soviet initiatives towards the EC and was second only to the USA as a partner in negotiations on general European issues.11 Trade patterns certainly support this argument. The long-standing Soviet attitude toward the European integration process could be characterised as malicious scepticism. On ideological grounds, Soviet policy makers had traditionally held that the insuperable internal contradictions of capitalism had made long-term agreements among imperialist states impossible. Sooner or later, the Leninist argument went, newly industrialised capitalist powers would demand a redivision of the spoils of world power and influence to accord with what they considered their rightful place as a result of their improved economic position. This combination of subjective and objective factors was said to be responsible for the two world wars of the 20th Century and would continue to dominate international relations in future. Furthermore, since revolutionary Russia had made its greatest headway in accumulating territory and world power from these earlier intra-imperialist conflicts, it was incumbent upon her leaders to prepare to do so again when the opportunity arose, as it inevitably must.12 Despite his occasional reference to the 'common European home' idea, Brezhnev clearly subscribed to this conventional Leninist position. His policies toward the EC, particularly on the issue of intermediate nuclear forces in Europe following the USSR's deployment of SS-20 missiles in the late 1970s, were obviously designed to play upon the anticipated 'contradictions' among West European countries and to exacerbate relations between the USA and its NATO partners.13 There were occasional voices in the Leninist wilderness, such as Andrei Sakharov's, pointing out the irrationality of war as an instrument of national policy in the thermo-nuclear age, but they were effectively stifled. It was only under Gorbachev that such voices were able to affect policy in a substantial way, and his acceptance of them was undoubtedly an important influence on the structure of his 'new political thinking'. Under it, the replacement of class conflict by interdependence and global issues as the primary motive force in contemporary international relations created new perspectives not only for relations between world capitalism and world socialism, but also for relations within the two respective 'social systems'. Among the states of the capitalist world, Gorbachev and his followers (most notably Eduard Shevardnadze and Alexander Yakovlev) now recognised real possibilities of long-term cooperation and, in Western Europe, genuine integration, because they were driven by common 'objective interests' and the requirements of international economic competition.14 Within the socialist world, by contrast, the new Soviet perspective was a good deal more sobering and, with hindsight, one might say, fateful. The recognised successes of the EC's integration process threw into bold relief the failure of similar efforts among the COMECON states. Gorbachev's early attempts to breathe new life into COMECON by ambitious plans for enhanced coordination and enterprise-level integration in the pursuit of technology-led development were gradually abandoned as too costly and too slow to achieve the desired objective of accelerated growth. In 1986 Gorbachev was still hoping to use the scientific and technical potential of advanced Bloc states like Czechoslovakia and the GDR as a substitute for reliance on the West for the technological 'quick fixes' considered necessary for the modernisation of the Soviet economy. Three years later this hope was all but forgotten. In an article in the Foreign Ministry's monthly International Affairs, the then Soviet Ambassador to Bonn, Yuli Kvitsinskii, noted prophetically and with something less than full confidence that, 'Big business in the FRG, as in the entire European Community for that matter, evidently dreams about a disintegration of the CMEA [COMECON] and of our changing into a kind of European Latin America. Whether it achieves this or not, depends on ourselves above all.'15 Apparently, even before the collapse of the Soviet empire in East European in the latter half of 1989, Soviet leaders were thus already seriously questioning the expediency of continuing to prop up the individual economies of the region, as well as the viability of COMECON as a counter to the EC. If, before, Gorbachev had hoped to begin negotiations with the EC as the leader of a unified phalanx of socialist states--to sign a lease in the 'common European home' as the head of a family of prospective tenants-- then by the middle of 1989 there were already voices in Moscow arguing in favour of going it alone in dealing with Western Europe. In any case, the rapid disintegration of the Bloc along with the Warsaw Treaty Organisation, and the simultaneous collapse of the Soviet economy and the impending breakup of the centralised Soviet state itself in perverse response to his domestic reforms quickly robbed Gorbachev of most of the bargaining power he had counted upon to wrest the best possible deal from the West. The effects of these drastic changes in what the Soviets used to call the 'correlation of forces between capitalism and socialism' were especially noteworthy in Soviet policy with respect to Germany. The magnitude of the change in the Soviet attitude would be even greater than in the case of European integration. Nevertheless, as late as September 1988--well into the period of perestroika and new political thinking--two officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs could still argue that it was ridiculous to assert, as some West German politicians did that the 'German question remains open': The official stand on this matter is known. Restoration of the unity of Germany as a state was provided for in the postwar Soviet proposals on German settlement. They were rejected by the West. Since then the situation in the world has changed cardinally. To expect Soviet foreign policy to return to what it was in the early 1950s is just as hopeless as to try to build a time machine. To insist on again opening up the "German question" is to deliberately doom Soviet-West German relations to failure. The only fair judge here is history.16 Similar utterances were emanating from the GDR itself 14 months later. In an interview in the Soviet weekly New Times in November 1989, Honecker's short-lived successor Egon Krenz, during a visit to Moscow shortly after assuming the General Secretaryship of the SED, had the following to say on the prospects for German reunification: This question is not yet on the agenda of the day, for there is nothing that could be reunified. Who can say how to unite socialism and capitalism in one state? The two German states belong to different military and political alliances. It should be added, and this is the main thing perhaps, that the existence of the GDR and the FRG is, furthermore, a main factor of stability in Europe.17 The 'verdict of history' would soon find a way to manage these allegedly insuperable difficulties. Socialism would yield to capitalism within a reunified Germany, the military and political alliances on the Soviet side would be liquidated, and other means would be found to address the issue of stability in Europe. One of the more interesting devices adopted by Soviet policy makers to justify the concession of what they had earlier considered unthinkable and to assuage the anxieties of those, not only in the USSR, but in Czechoslovakia and Poland as well, who still doubted the wisdom of allowing the reunification of Germany, was to claim that what was involved was not reunification but rather 'unification'. In the words of New Times commentator Lev Bezymensky, 'Since it is not a question of reunification, but of creating a German state from the FRG, the GDR and Berlin in their present borders, there can be no territorial and other claims on its part.'18 This formula would become the standard Soviet expression for the process of German integration.19 Unquestionably the key figure in the framing of the new Soviet perspectives on Europe and German unification was Foreign Minister Edvard Shevardnadze. He represented one side of what was an increasingly bitter division on these issues in the Soviet foreign policy decision-making community. The reasoning of the Shevardnadze faction was as follows: given mounting evidence of the political and economic collapse of the communist systems in Eastern Europe, there was little sense in trying to preserve it as an alternative to the EC.20 The fact that such evidence appeared so quickly in the Soviet media suggests that Gorbachev and his supporters wished to prepare the ground for jettisoning the former allies by highlighting their economic and military expendability. From the standpoint of Soviet national interests it was preferable to endorse the processes of European integration and try to participate in them on the best possible terms, applying as much leverage from the moribund WTO alliance system as could still be managed. At that stage (May 1990), Shevardnadze was not yet willing to contemplate a unified Germany's remaining within NATO, at least not publicly and without a high price. An idea of his official stance at the time can be seen in an interview he gave during the so-called '4+2' conference of foreign ministers in Bonn in May 1990: In general, Europe will be peaceful. This is the main thing. Germany is an important factor of building a peaceful Europe. The German question must be solved in such a way as to make Germany a factor of peace and stability in Europe. There is an economic interest as well....Ties with the GDR are of vital importance for the USSR. Destruction of these ties will be contrary to our interests and the interests of the Germans. West Germany is also interested in developing relations with the Soviet Union in the context of a united Germany, but using the existing traditions. This will be a new level of cooperation, a new quality with a greater economic, technological and scientific potential. Today we are laying the foundation of this new cooperation. Germany can become a bridge linking the USSR and Europe. In its turn, the Soviet Union's negative attitude to united Germany's NATO membership is explained by the fact that as a NATO member, Germany will not be able to serve as a bridge between the West and the East of Europe. If united Germany remains a non-aligned democratic state, it will really become a giant in the heart of Europe and will promote East-West contacts.21 This insistence on German neutrality was possibly just a bargaining position--directed not only at the West and the FRG, but also at domestic conservatives, who were becoming increasingly nervous over the pace and direction of the changes in Soviet foreign policy. It is likely that Shevardnadze himself still had difficulties with Western demands for the inclusion of a united Germany within NATO. But this position rapidly changed, once it became clear that the Soviet hand was virtually empty and that a neutral Germany might be much more dangerous to European stability than one that was firmly anchored within an integrated European community. Previous efforts by Washington and Paris to delay the process of German unification until the European integration process was completed were equally stillborn; the dynamics of intra-German politics proved unstoppable by West or East. The two processes would have to proceed simultaneously, and both Paris and Washington, on the one hand, and Moscow, on the other, would have to try to make the best of an uncomfortable situation. For Moscow, or at least the part of it that was reconciled to the emerging new order in Europe, the principal tack was to point out the positive implications of the changes that had occurred in West Germany since the war. The argument was that democratic forces in Germany had proven themselves and that, in any case, German prosperity was firmly grounded in the Western liberal-democratic order that had emerged in the course of economic integration. Even within NATO, a unified Germany was bound to be effectively contained as a factor of stability.22 This endorsement of 'bourgeois democracy' as a guarantee of peace and concord in Europe was, of course, a radical departure for Soviet analysts, and many conservatives in the Soviet power structure were far from impressed.23 The consummation of unification and Germany's inclusion within NATO changed the parameters of Soviet perceptions on Germany and Europe, but not the bipolar nature of the debates in Moscow. Since there was little that the Soviet Union could do to reverse the integration processes already in train, with the official consent of the USSR government--short, that is, of delaying or otherwise impeding the fulfillment of agreed obligations such as the withdrawal of Soviet troops from eastern Germany--the focus of the debates turned inward. Conservatives in and outside the Supreme Soviet bitterly condemned Gorbachev for having 'lost' Eastern Europe and for having 'given away' the GDR without exacting sufficient compensation. In March, one of the infamous 'black colonels' in the USSR Supreme Soviet, Nikolai Petrushenko, threatened to block the ratification of two of the five treaties signed between the FRG and the USSR (three had already been ratified) and to open an investigation leading to a renegotiation of the terms already agreed upon.24 The issue was used to undermine Gorbachev both at home and in his dealings with foreign governments, and its conservative protagonists were among the organisers of the abortive putsch of 19-21 August 1991. Gorbachev's sudden turn to the right at the end of 1990 suggested a high degree of vulnerability to such charges and an ill-judged acceptance of his dependence on the conservatives to remain in power. One symbol of the change in his position was the refusal to turn Erich Honecker over to the Federal German Public Prosecutor in February 1991 to face charges in connection with the slaying of refugees attempting to flee acrosss the Berlin wall during the 1980s. Not only did the Soviets refuse to hand over Honecker, who had taken refuge in a Soviet military hospital supposedly to receive medical treatment, but on 13 March he was secretly spirited away to Moscow. German protests fell on deaf ears.25 This was, to be sure, a largely symbolic matter, and it is doubtful whether the German Government really expected Gorbachev to hand over their 'alter Genosse' Honecker. In any case, it was a demonstration of a determination in still influential political circles not to allow Soviet compliance to be taken for granted in future dealings between the two countries. There have been similar demonstrations on other relatively minor issues since German unification.26 It is not yet clear whether Boris Yeltsin and the Russian successor to the USSR will be more forthcoming on such issues. But there were also more serious reservations about the benefits of the new Soviet policy towards Germany by persons who are not so obviously within the conservative camp. Among them are economists who have noted with concern the basic tendencies of German policy, which they see as leading to the extension of German influence in Eastern Europe and to the integration of the region into the EC under German hegemony. As these Soviet observers see it, the problems is that in the next few years Germany will be preoccupied with the development of its five eastern Laender and, to a lesser extent, the rest of Eastern Europe, essentially leaving Russia and the other states of the former USSR out of European integration processes during the next few critical years.27 It is clear that these issues were high on the list of topics for discussion between President Gorbachev and Chancellor Kohl during their regular meetings.28 By all accounts, the FRG was the leading proponent in the West for giving generous material and moral support to Gorbachev and his reform policies, especially following the August putsch. But the Germans, at least on this issue, did not wish to allow themselves to get too far out in front of their Western allies. Soviet citizens at various levels of the social hierarchy remain uncomfortable with the degree of reliance on German intercession that seemed to be a central feature of Gorbachev's campaign to join the Western economic and political community.29 It is perhaps 'no accident', as Soviet ideologists used to say, that so much play was given in the Soviet media to the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of the USSR. Nevertheless, as the process of European integration proceeded, at the end of 1991, with the tune largely being called by an increasingly self-confident Germany, it was clear that the leaders of the successor states of the former USSR, particularly Russia and the Ukraine, would have to establish good relations first of all with the Germans. It is significant that Russian President Yeltsin's first official visit outside his country after the putsch and his effective assumption of political dominance in November 1991 was to Bonn.30 Conclusions The answer to the question posed in the title of this chapter is 'probably yes'; but the matter is no longer relevant. The question is, of course, a paraphrase of the famous saying attributed to various nationals of almost every country in Europe, from the Atlantic to the Urals: 'We like Germany so much that we prefer to have two of them.' Even if it were possible to re-create a second German state--however much this might ease the apprehensions of many Europeans on both sides of the Oder-Neisse--the option is no longer acceptable to the Germans themselves, and nowadays it is their choice that counts. The Soviets are plainly no longer in a position to impose their will, and the major Western partners of Germany no longer consider it expedient to try. Much has changed in the nature of Soviet-German relations during the past several years. In all parts of Russian society there remains the traditional respect for the achievements of German technology and organisation. But the ambivalence that has always characterised the relationship is still very much in evidence. When I was a postgraduate student on the US-Soviet exchange at Moscow State University in the early 1960s and in subsequent visits to the USSR, I was repeatedly struck by the condescending attitude of East German students and official delegations and West German tourists towards everything Soviet. Traces of that attitude are certainly no less present today, now that the Soviet system, 'real socialism' and even the vaunted Soviet Army have collapsed. The Mathias Rust affair was a particularly brazen statement of disdain, and many Russians resented it. The present orgy of self-denigration and contempt for political leaders and the system that has engendered them throughout most parts of the former USSR has undoubtedly attenuated this resentment over the revival of German superiority in Europe, but as in the past, it can be expected to emerge once again in the next cycle of xenophobia and anti-German sentiment. For the moment, the 'love' and respect part of the relationship is in the ascendancy among the moderates and reformers around Yeltsin, but that could change if the Germans do not play their cards skilfully and sensitively--something for which their diplomats have never been particularly distinguished. During a recent trip to Moscow as part of my university's program of consultations with the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences, I found a profound sense of concern among our Soviet colleagues over the dangers of a revival of both German and Japanese domination of the future world political and economic order. To be sure, there was probably a self-serving element in this position, an effort to bring Australia on side as a potential ally in the promotion of Soviet interests against the West. Nevertheless, there was undoubtedly a degree of genuine apprehension among these scholars, who were mainly well disposed to reform of the economic and political system and its campaign for acceptance in the world community. These sentiments were further illustrated by the public concern expressed by the Soviet Government, as well as a number of Western states, over the reckless intervention of the German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, in the Yugoslav crisis. Genscher's immoderate statements on the issue and his determination to recognise the break-away Slovenian and Croatian regimes in their dispute with the Yugoslav Federal authorities have caused alarm in many parts of Europe and elsewhere.31 Not only did this 'loose cannon' performance by Genscher heighten the alarm in Moscow over the potential analogy with its own problems of territorial disintegration, but it also awakened more general fears of a reassertion of German intervention in the internal affairs of the existing states of the European continent. The fact that Austria was pursuing a similar line raised some not entirely implausible (at least to students of Balkan history) suspicions of a new Germanic conspiracy to restore the imperial order of earlier times. Had the abortive putsch of 19-21 August 1991 succeeded, its leaders would surely have played upon the latent popular resentment of heavy-handed Germanic interference to stem, if not reverse, the progress in rapprochement between the USSR and Western Europe. It is, as they say, 'no accident' that a high-ranking delegation of Yugoslav army officers was in Moscow shortly before the putsch to arrange long-term deliveries of advanced Soviet military equipment to Yugoslavia.32 There can be little doubt that the traditional sympathies between Russia and fellow-Orthodox Serbia and Montenegro will remain a factor to be considered in future political calculations in Europe. German statesmen have evidently chosen to ignore it, probably unwisely. The fears of German domination are, of course, not confined to Russia and Yugoslavia. German diplomacy will have to become a good deal more tactful and sensitive than it has been in the past, if European integration is to proceed to its full consummation and if the various successor states of the former Soviet Union are to be brought into the structures for durable peace and security in Europe. For the moment, Yeltsin, in his dealings with the West, and with Germany in particular, is hardly negotiating from a position of strength. The temptation for Germany may be to try to take advantage of Russian weaknesses to gain a special position for itself, both politically and economically, and to restore the 'special relationship' which has been so beguiling to the leaders of both powers at various periods in the past. This temptation should be resisted at all costs, and German dealings with the new Russian-led Commonwealth of Independent States should be kept as far as possible within the framework of general Western, or at least EC, policy. The 'special relationship' between Germany and Russia has never proven to be a durable factor for peace and security in the past. The peculiar historical ambivalence of their mutual interaction--the love-hate relationship--will probably arise once again to confound the expectations of extraordinary powerÐpolitical benefit that have periodically attracted the leaders of the two countries. German professions of a special understanding of the 'Russian psyche' have never proven to be well founded. A certain amount of distance in the relationship is a prerequisite for the future healthy development of Russia and the fledgling CIS, and for lasting peace in Europe. Notes 1 Leonid Ionin, 'A Postcard from Bielefeld', New Times, no. 1 (January 1988), p. 24. 2 I.A. Goncharov, Oblomov. (Moscow: Gosizdat. "Detskaia literatura', 1955). The novel was first published in 1859. 3 Quoted in Alexander Vucinich, Science in Russian Culture: A History to 1860. (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1963), p. 33. 4 One of Leibniz's recommendations was the encouragement of missionary work by Western church representatives in Russia as a concomitant of rationalisation of Russian culture. Vucinich, op. cit., p. 46. 5 ibid., p. 75. 6 The number of officers evidently of German origin who fell on the battlefield of Borodino in the war against Napoleon and whose names are inscribed on the regimental monuments is particularly noteworthy. 7 For an insightful treatment of Lenin's (and Trotsky's) development as political leader and the role-model influence of German Social-Democracy on the Bolsheviks, see Philip Pomper, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin: The Intelligentsia and Power. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 206-212. For a time, in early 1910, the funds of the warring factions of the Bolshevik party were placed 'in receivership' in the hands of Karl Kautsky, Franz Mehring and Klara Zetkin, the three top leaders of the SPD. Cited by Pomper in ibid., p. 203. 8 From the title of Lenin's work 'The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky'. For a good account of the development of their relations from Kautsky's point of view see Massimo L. Salvadori, Kautsky e la rivoluzione socialista 1880/1938. (Milan: Feltrinelli Editore, 1976), esp. pp. 232-246. 9 Yuri Starostenko, 'Towards renewal', New Times, no. 46 (14-20 November 1989), p. 5. 10 Heinz Timmermann, Die Sowjetunion und Westeuropa: Perzeptionswandel und politische Neuausrichtung. (Cologne: Berichte des Bundesinstituts fur ostwissenschaftliche und internationale Studien, 1989), Report 35-1989, esp. pp. 9-10. 11 ibid. 12 For a recent brief rehearsal of this thinking and an argument why it is no longer relevant see the article by USSR Foreign Ministry official Vladimir Stupishin, 'Common European Home and the Slogan for a United States of Europe', in the MFA's journal International Affairs, no. 3 (March 1989), pp. 89-95. 13 I discuss this transition from the 'old political thinking' to the 'new' in my recent book, Robert F. Miller, Soviet Foreign Policy Today: Gorbachev and the New Political Thinking. (Sydney, New York, London: Allen & Unwin, 1991), pp. 51-3, 79-86. 14 See the 'Theses' on EC integration proposed by a group of Soviet foreign policy experts from the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations of the USSR Academy of Sciences' in December 1988 paraphrased in Timmermann, op. cit., pp. 16-17. 15 Yuli Kvitsinsky, 'An Embassy on the Rhine', International Affairs, no. 5 (May 1989), p. 37. 16 Yevgeni Shmagin and Igor Bratchikov, 'A second wind?', International Affairs, no. 9 (September 1988), p. 63. 17 Yuri Starostenko, 'Towards renewal', op. cit., p. 5. 18 Lev Bezymensky, 'Whom will history punish?', New Times, No. 37 (18-24 September 1990), p. 27. 19 The same formula was used by German political scientist Manfred Schmidt in a seminar in the Political Science Program in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University in early 1991, where the speaker employed basically the same reasoning for the distinction between reunification and unification. 20 One month after Honecker's overthrow it was revealed that the economy of the 'jewel in the crown', East Germany, was 'moribund', with a budget deficit of 130 billion Ost marks. Anatoly Kovrygin, 'Unveiling the secrets', New Times, no. 49 (5-11 December 1989), pp. 27-8. More detailed figures presented later were slightly different, but the message was the same. They showed internal enterprise indebtedness to the GDR state bank were over 200 billion Ost marks, and the external debt of the country was 35 billion Ost marks. In 1990 the budget deficit was expected to be 120 billion Ost marks. A Kondakov, 'Ekonomicheskie aspekty ob"edineniia', Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia (hereafter cited as ME i MO ), no. 8 (August 1990), p. 81. 21 Interviewed by Galina Sidorova and Nikita Zholkver, 'Losing enemies', New Times, no. 20 (15-21 May 1990), p. 6. 22 See, for example, the roundtable discussion of the results of the elections in the GDR in March 1990 and the implications of forthcoming German unification for European stability in 'Edinaia Germaniia i ee sosedi', ME i MO, no. 8 (August 1990), pp. 68-74. 23 The popularity of the opposing position in communist party circles is noted by Lev Bezymensky in 'Seeing clearly', New Times, no. 36 (4-10 September 1990), p. 11. By his comments, it is appears that Bezymensky himself is no more than a lukewarm supporter of the new Soviet position on Germany. 24 Lev Bezymensky, 'When secrecy pays', New Times, no. 11 (19-25 March 1991), p. 27. 25 Vitaly Shuvalov, 'Birds of a feather', New Times, no. 12 ( 26 March-3 April 1991), pp. 22-3. 26 See, for example, the case where Defence Minister Yazov refused to permit the use of the Art Theatre of the Soviet Army for a major stage production by the prominent German director Peter Stein. Eventually, after threats of resignation by Soviet artists and pressure from Gorbachev, the production was allowed to proceed there. One of the speculated reasons for Yazov's obduracy was his hostility to German unification. N. Ismailova, 'Teatr i marshal Iazov', Izvestiia, 27 June 1991, p. 3. 27 Vladimir Korovkin, 'Posledstviia dlia evropeiskoi ekonomiki', ME i ME, no. 12 (December 1991), pp. 116-117. 28 See, for example, the press conference given by the two leaders following their discussions in Kiev on 5 July 1991. 'Press-konferentsiia v Mezhigor'e', Pravda, 6 July 1991, p. 5. 29 See, for example, Gorbachev's effort, during a television interview in Moscow, to counter the 'feeling among our people' that the Western negotiating partners are out to 'denigrate the dignity' of the USSR. 'Interv'iu M.S. Gorbacheva Tsentral'nomu televiziiu', Pravda, 17 June 1991, p. 5. Contrast this position with that of Vladislav Drobkov, in 'Spory vokrug pomoshchi, ili Chto my mozhem zhdat' ot Zapada', Pravda, 5 July 1991, p. 3, where the fear of just such denigration is fully expressed, the benefits of Western 'generosity' are questioned, and the desirability of self-help is emphasised. 30 'S vizitom v FRG', Sel'skaia zhizn', 22 November 1991, p. 3. German newspapers were cited here as heralding Yeltsin as 'actually the most influential political official in the former Soviet Union'. 31 See, for example, George Brock, 'Disunity threatens EC bid to solve crisis', The Weekend Australian, 6-7 July 1991, p. 14. 32 On the implications of Defence Minister Kadijevic's and his delegation's trip to Moscow in July 1991 see the interview with former Croatian Defence Minister Gen. Martin Spegelj by Mladen Maloca and Darko Pavicic, 'Hrvatska mora u ofanzivu', Danas, 15 October 1991, p. 21-3.