Post Wall, Post Square: Rebuilding the World after 1989

On Thursday 13 July, as Bush flew from Budapest to Paris for the G7 summit, he and Scowcroft reflected on the ‘new Europe being born’. During the flight the president also shared his impressions with members of the press corps, huddled around him on Air Force One. He said he had come away with ‘this real acute sense’ of the change that was taking place in Eastern Europe – a change he described as ‘absolutely amazing’, ‘vibrant’ and ‘vital’. He declared his determination to ‘play a constructive role’ in that process of change. The meetings, especially with the Hungarian leaders, had been ‘very good, very frank’. Warming up, Bush added, ‘I mean it was with emotion, and it wasn’t your traditional “I’ll read my cards, and you read your cards” kind of diplomacy.’ There had been ‘an intensity to it, a fervour to it’ that, he said, ‘moved me very much’.[81] (#litres_trial_promo)

The president had no idea what lay ahead and so he remained cautious, but he was certainly encouraged by what he had seen. ‘I am firmly convinced that this wave of freedom, if you will, is the wave of the future,’ said Bush buoyantly. To some, it seemed that he was too cautious and overly sympathetic to the communist old guard. Yet others, including his deputy national security adviser Robert Gates, argued that the president was playing a more complex game. While preaching democratic freedoms and national independence to the crowds, he talked the language of pragmatism and conciliation to the old-guard leaders – in a deliberate attempt to ‘grease their path out of power’.[82] (#litres_trial_promo)

Certainly, the challenge faced by his administration was to encourage reform in Eastern Europe without going so far and fast as to provoke turmoil and then a backlash. A fraught economic transition could easily result in inflation, unemployment and food shortages – all of which would force reform-oriented leaders to reverse course. Above all, Bush wanted to be sure to avoid triggering a Soviet reaction – possibly a crackdown in the style of 1953, 1956 and 1968. The key to successful change in the Soviet bloc was Soviet acquiescence, and Bush was keen to make it easy for Gorbachev to provide this. ‘We’re not there to poke a stick in the eye of Mr Gorbachev,’ he told the reporters. ‘Just the opposite – to encourage the very kind of reforms that he is championing and more reforms.’[83] (#litres_trial_promo)

Fresh from witnessing revolutionary change, Bush arrived in a city obsessed with commemorating revolution. 14 July 1989 would mark the bicentenary of the fall of the Bastille, the starting point of France’s quarter-century roller coaster of demotic politics and imperial autocracy. French president François Mitterrand was determined to impress his international guests with an extravagant celebration of French grandeur – and his own quasi-regal position. Yet, given the dramatic upheavals in Eastern Europe, France’s historical pageant had particular resonance in July 1989.

As soon as Bush arrived, he was whisked off to the Place du Trocadéro opposite the Eiffel Tower. He sat with the six other leaders of the major industrialised nations, together with over twenty leaders from developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas, for a ceremony to commemorate the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man. Actors read excerpts from the declaration and quotations from the revolutionary leaders, wreaths were laid at a stone inscription of the document and 500 doves were released into the blue Paris sky. Mitterrand’s intent was clear: France’s pioneering revolution was to be remembered not for the blood in the gutters but for its enduring values: liberté, fraternité, égalité. Then followed an evening at the brand-new, gleaming mammoth Opera House in the Place de la Bastille, on the site of the once-dreaded royal prison. On this occasion too Mitterrand’s special twenty guests were present, together with the leaders of the G7 – as they were for the Bastille Day Parade the next morning, when the French president put on a massive display of France’s ‘world class’ military prowess down the Champs-Elysées. Nobody could mistake the implicit message: the Fifth Republic was still a power with global reach. Watching 300 tanks, 5,000 troops and a mobile nuclear missile unit go by along Paris’s grand boulevard, Scowcroft couldn’t help being reminded of ‘a Soviet May Day parade’.[84] (#litres_trial_promo)

Mitterrand’s friends from the Third World really irritated the Americans. After all, the Paris G7 economic summit had been prepared especially to deal with the pressing issues of debt relief and the global environment. But the US delegation emphatically did not want to get the G7 meeting conflated with an impromptu North–South gathering on the margins of the French national celebrations, especially after the debtor countries had already seized the spotlight in Paris to appeal for relief from the developing world’s $1.3 trillion debt. The White House worried about the risk that in such an ex tempore meeting between creditors and debtors, as advocated by France, the ‘South’ as a bloc would dress up their demands to the ‘North’ as ‘reparations’ for years of colonial ‘exploitation’, laced with Marxist–Leninist-inspired rhetoric. And generally, the US strongly opposed collective debtor action. In its view, debt problems should be resolved country by country and in this vein the Americans announced a $1–2 billion short-term loan to neighbouring Mexico and then picked up the case of Poland.[85] (#litres_trial_promo)

Given the G7 summit’s central focus on debt relief, General Jaruzelski saw his opportunity and appealed to the Big Seven for a two-year, multibillion-dollar rescue programme on 13 July. Published in all major Polish party newspapers, his six-point programme included seeking $1 billion to reorganise food supplies, $2 billion in new credits, as well as a reduction and rescheduling of Poland’s debt of roughly $40 billion, plus financing for an assortment of specific projects. Significantly, the Solidarity movement endorsed Jaruzelski’s appeal; indeed, Wałęsa had just come out in support of an approved Communist Party candidate for the presidency, which made General Jaruzelski’s victory much more likely – thus helping to end the political deadlock of the post-election weeks.[86] (#litres_trial_promo)

Still elated by his recent visits, Bush was happy to use Jaruzelski’s financial demands to put Eastern Europe on the top of the summit agenda, wresting the initiative away from Mitterrand and his supporting cast of global little leaguers. But if support for democratic change were to be the centrepiece of the meeting, this meant the summit also had to engage with a less palatable issue for the Americans: the crushed revolution in China. And so the Paris G7 came to be dominated by two burning political issues of the moment – problems that potentially threatened global order.

As soon as the summit got under way on the afternoon of Friday 14 July – in the new glass pyramid entrance of the Louvre – the leaders started by arguing over how far they should go in condemning China. Most Europeans, led by the French president, wanted to punish the PRC with exemplary sanctions, but Bush (as well as Prime Minister Thatcher, who was worried about the fate of Hong Kong[87] (#litres_trial_promo)) urged them to be prudent. The US president wanted as little damage as possible to the Sino-American relationship that was so important to world peace. Yet he was going out on a limb in Paris, because the US Senate voted that very day by eighty-one to ten to impose more stringent US sanctions against the PRC.

Japan’s prime minister Sosuke Uno, Asia’s sole voice among the G7, also urged caution. Tokyo did not want to see Beijing isolated and by default pushed into Moscow’s arms. Moreover, given Japan’s long history of invading China, it lacked the moral high ground to punish Beijing. Japan saw itself in a unique position. If it could keep channels to China open while using its position as America’s key Pacific ally, it might be able to broker the restoration of Sino-American cooperation. Seeing real benefits in this, Bush worked hard with Uno to soften the language on China in the summit communiqué. In the end, the leaders issued a strong condemnation of the PRC’s ‘violent repression’ but they did not announce any additional sanctions and merely urged the Chinese to ‘create conditions which enable them to avoid isolation’.[88] (#litres_trial_promo)

With the prickly topic of China out of the way, on Saturday the G7 moved quickly to achieve agreement on Poland and Hungary. Their ‘Declaration on East–West Relations’ stated: ‘We recognise that the political changes taking place in these countries will be difficult to sustain without economic progress.’[89] (#litres_trial_promo) In order to facilitate this progress, they agreed to impose somewhat easier conditions than on a normal IMF loan, by allowing Poland to postpone its $5 billion tranche of foreign debt repayment due in 1989. They also agreed to consider an array of economic aid options for Poland and Hungary (investments, joint ventures, professional training and an infusion of skilled managers), as well as emergency food supplies.

None of this was particularly surprising. What was much more noteworthy and eventually significant was the decision that the economic and food aid for Eastern bloc countries would be coordinated by the European Community – a striking novelty in international politics.[90] (#litres_trial_promo) Bush got what he wanted. Enlisting support for Eastern Europe endowed his largely symbolic visit to Warsaw, Gdańsk and Budapest with real substance. But he had never intended to bear the burden alone. The G7 had readily bought his concept of ‘concerted Western action’ in support of Poland and Hungary which, Bush hoped, would lift Western engagement with Eastern Europe out of the superpower domain, spread the burden and make possible a larger, more synchronised and less competitive Western effort. The White House also believed that, couched within this broader multilateral framework, US action would look less threatening to the Soviets. Working with and through allies would become a hallmark of Bush’s diplomatic style.

It was Chancellor Kohl who proposed, with prompt agreement from the others, to ask the European Commission to head a group of donor countries to provide assistance to Poland and Hungary. This eventually became the G24: twenty-four industrialised states both from within the EC and outside it. Commission president Jacques Delors – always keen to assume a larger role for himself at the head of this supranational body – was very ready to oversee what was effectively a ‘clearing house for aid’. After all, in 1988 the EC had already established loose links with the Comecon as a trading bloc and Hungary had intimated its desire to work towards an association agreement. So, while the USA was content to take a back seat, the EC gained a position of leadership that signalled its growing political power.

The Eastern European aid package was the first time the European Community had been chosen as a follow-up agency for a G7 decision. It was a harbinger of things to come. Just three weeks earlier in Madrid on 26–7 June the EC had agreed to consummate a closer union – both political and economic – in 1992. And it was no accident that the specific blueprint for tighter economic and monetary union had been mapped out by Delors himself.[91] (#litres_trial_promo)

Delors had been propelled into the presidency of the European Commission in 1984, following a strikingly effective three-year stint under Mitterrand as France’s finance minister which highlighted his skills as a political broker. He had successfully persuaded his notoriously obstinate boss to temper his socialist Keynesianism with a policy of austerity and fiscal consolidation. This shored up the failing franc and enabled France to remain within the European Monetary System. On the back of these achievements, moving on to Brussels as Commission president, Delors deftly steered the twelve often divergent members of the European Community towards the signing of the Single European Act in 1986, which embodied a firm commitment to move towards full economic and monetary union (EMU). Delors undoubtedly saw EMU as a way to advance the cause of European integration but he was not an avid federalist, passionate about a United States of Europe. His objections, both pragmatic and philosophical, to European federalism also help to explain his caution about highly centralised approaches to decision-making when developing the embryonic ‘Euro Area’. In 1988, at the EC Council meeting in Hanover, European leaders authorised Delors to chair a committee of central-bank governors and other experts to propose concrete stages towards EMU. Here, again, he showed his ability to forge compromises between proponents of different economic approaches, in particular building bridges between France and Germany.[92] (#litres_trial_promo)

And so at Madrid in June 1989 it was agreed by the leaders of the EC 12 to launch the following year the first stage of EMU – completion of the single market by 1992. This would involve abolition of all foreign-exchange controls, a free market in financial services and strengthening of competition policy – which entailed a radical reduction in state subsidies. The other prong of this policy was the reinforcement of social cohesion, which involved freedom of movement between states and guaranteed workers’ rights. Achieving the single market with enhanced cohesion was top priority for this new and exciting chapter in the history of the Community. And with it came a visibly greater role in international affairs for the EC – and its Commission president. This was evident when Bush made a point of meeting Delors in Washington in June, two weeks before Madrid and five weeks ahead of the G7.

The meeting was intended to signal that the United States took seriously the Community and the ‘EC 92’ project (US shorthand for the transformation of the EC into the EU).[93] (#litres_trial_promo) Keen to head off the danger of an economically protectionist Fortress Europe, Bush and Baker made it quite clear that America wanted to see the completion of the single European market linked with real progress in the so-called Uruguay Round negotatiations on a new agreement about global tariffs and trade – one that would replace the crumbling Cold War GATT system. Delors agreed that the EC 92 and global trade talks had to run together: if the Uruguay Round were not successful, it would not be possible for the Community to meet its EC 92 objectives. In fact, he emphasised, ‘it would be a contradiction for the Uruguay Round to fail and EC 92 to go forward’. The sticking points on all this, however, were French agriculture, because of the country’s entrenched farm lobby, and Japan, with its strong export economy but heavily protected domestic market. Delors hoped that ‘in the future the US, EC, and Canada could jointly put pressure on the Japanese’.[94] (#litres_trial_promo)

Although apparently emerging as an independent actor, the EC always relied for its effectiveness on the key member states. Delors, for all his ambition, never forgot this. And the most significant economic power in the EC was the Federal Republic, so it was vital to work closely with Kohl. Bush, of course, knew this; and he also understood well that the German–American axis was one way of engaging with the West European engine. After all, the chancellor was genuinely supportive of EMU: as Delors told Bush, ‘Kohl reinforces the goals of the European Community.’ Of course, there was now a danger in the summer of 1989 that further Western European integration might be derailed by the incipient disintegration of Eastern Europe. Yet here again Germany was pivotal.

This became clear during the Paris G7 summit over the question of how to channel aid to Poland and Hungary. It was Kohl who sponsored the idea of the EC as the conduit for Western financial assistance. For the chancellor – ever mindful of the German question – this route offered several advantages. First, West Germany (like America) was keen to maintain the momentum of change within the Eastern bloc but he wanted to keep the process peaceful and avoid bloodshed. A concerted Western economic initiative could prevent anarchy and forestall Soviet military intervention. Second, if the FRG sheltered under the EC umbrella, nobody could blame Kohl going it alone – edging away from West, cosying up to the East and even asserting German power in ways that raised the spectre of the Kaiser and the Führer.

What’s more, unlike Bush, Kohl was ready to put a substantial sum of money on the table. He had already told Bush on 28 June that he intended to offer Hungary an additional DM 1 billion (nearly $500 million) of ‘fresh money’, on top of a loan without conditions of the same amount that he had granted in 1987. Even if the fine print made clear that this funding was actually loans and credits for buying German goods and services rather than direct aid, the sum involved was forty times more than what the president himself had offered Budapest. The chancellor was also very keen to help Poland bilaterally, but this was currently on ice because the aid question was entangled with the position of the German minority in Poland – a sensitive matter for the Poles and for the political right in the FRG. This controversy, rooted in unsettled territorial legacies of the Second World War, was another reminder of the FRG’s limits as an independent international actor. The deadlock over a deal also frustrated Kohl’s aspiration to go to Warsaw. Initially planned for the summer to follow on the heels of Mitterrand and Bush, his state visit to Poland would not take place until 9 November.[95] (#litres_trial_promo)

Delors and the G24 moved fast because Warsaw and Budapest feared that economic collapse might undermine democratic reform. Officials made a distinction between Hungary and Poland, however, since only the latter had requested short-term food aid to combat severe shortages. Hungary’s twenty-four-page wish list concentrated on better terms of trade with the industrialised world and the liberalisation of foreign investment. The Poles, of course, would come in for similar consideration once their immediate food crisis was resolved. On 18 August, as part of a $120 million package including meat, cereals, citrus fruit and olive oil, the EC announced its first delivery of 10,000 tons of beef to Poland, to arrive in early September. A further shipment of 200,000 tons of wheat stored in Germany, as well as 75,000 tons of barley from France and 25,000 tons from Belgium, were soon to follow – with 500,000 more in the pipeline. The idea was that the Polish government would sell the free food to the people and then reinvest the profits in their economies, especially the private farm sector. This arrangement was formalised in a counterpart fund agreement the G24 negotiated. The role played by EC/G24 in the late summer of 1989 would provide a template for further Eastern aid packages in the future.[96] (#litres_trial_promo)

So, in the end, it was Brussels, not Washington, which oversaw Western support for change in Central and Eastern Europe. This somewhat undercut Bush’s claims that it was he and the United States who were ‘propelling’ reform in Poland and Hungary. Although his rhetoric had grown bolder since the spring, Bush’s actions revealed his preference for evolution over revolution, privileging stability and order, backed by a deliberate policy of burden-sharing with allies.[97] (#litres_trial_promo) A mild recession in the USA and a legacy of debt from the Reagan years that had dramatically increased the federal budget deficit reinforced Bush’s apprehensions about the dangers of anarchy in a Europe that might become a bottomless pit for US dollars. The president was therefore pleased with the outcome of the G7 summit. What worried him most was a letter that Mitterrand read out on Bastille Day at the very start of their meeting.

*

The letter came from Gorbachev – it was the first time that a Soviet leader had written officially to the G7. And, it was also the first time the USSR had proposed not only expanded economic cooperation but even direct Soviet participation in such efforts.

‘The formation of a cohesive world economy implies that the multilateral economic partnership be placed on a qualitatively new level,’ Gorbachev wrote. ‘Multilateral East–West cooperation on global economic problems is far behind the development of bilateral ties. This state of things does not appear justified, taking account of the weight that our countries have in the world economy.’ That, he said, was the logical extension of his programme of domestic economic restructuring. ‘Our perestroika is inseparable from a policy aiming at our full participation in the world economy,’ he stated. ‘The world can only gain from the opening up of a market as big as the Soviet Union.’[98] (#litres_trial_promo)

As with all of Gorbachev’s words, the rhetoric was impressive, even compelling. There was no mistaking the Soviet leader’s keenness to join the G7. But Bush was wary about the Soviets. Their reforms had not yet advanced far enough to warrant full membership in the top club of free-market economies.[99] (#litres_trial_promo) And he could see that Soviet involvement would mostly be of benefit to Moscow. Yet Gorbachev’s letter, widely quoted in the international press, was impossible to ignore. The absence of the Soviet leader was felt throughout the summit, just as it had been during Bush’s visits to Warsaw and Budapest. Tiananmen was another ghost at the feast – an ugly reminder of what could happen if democratic reform went wrong.

After the summit ended on Sunday morning, 16 July, Bush chatted with Baker and Scowcroft on the steps of the Paris embassy overlooking the garden; they discussed their impressions and experiences of the past few days. Suddenly the president announced that the time had come for him to meet at long last with Gorbachev – speaking, as Scowcroft later recalled, ‘in that way he has when his mind is made up. Neither Baker nor I remonstrated with him. Baker had never been as negative as I about an early Gorbachev meeting, and I no longer felt so strongly about it.’[100] (#litres_trial_promo)

It looked like a spontaneous impulse, but in fact Bush had been mulling over this for several weeks. Particular impetus came from the West Germans. On 6 June, in the Oval Office, FRG president Richard von Weizsäcker had warned Bush about the implications of the recent turbulence in Poland and Hungary. ‘It would be useful if the US had quiet talks with Moscow about the future of Eastern Europe,’ he said. The West European allies would do the same based, as he put it, ‘on the values of the Atlantic Alliance’ and the FRG would act within this framework to avoid any impression of an independent Ostpolitik.[fn1] (#litres_trial_promo) Weizsäcker returned to the same point later in the conversation, warning Bush more bluntly that ‘in their foreign relations, the Soviets are approaching a time that is totally unknown to them, and they are legitimately worried’. He added firmly: ‘The West needs to talk to Moscow to alleviate these fears.’ The US president did not respond directly but segued to China, observing that he ‘had the feeling that the Soviets are saying “there but for the grace of God go I”. They may be worrying that reform could affect them in the same way.’[101] (#litres_trial_promo)

The impressions gleaned from this conversation were reinforced on 15 June when Chancellor Kohl – immediately after his talks with Gorbachev in Bonn – called Bush on the phone to convey his impressions. The Soviet leader, he said, had been in ‘good shape’ and relatively ‘optimistic’, showing himself keen to support Polish and Hungarian reform efforts. But Kohl kept coming back to one issue: Gorbachev was ‘seeking ways of establishing personal contact with the president’. Laying it on thick, the chancellor claimed that he and Gorbachev had ‘talked for quite some time about the president’. It was clear, said Kohl, that Gorbachev had a ‘general suspicion towards the United States’ but also that he had ‘greater hope for establishing good contact with Bush than he had with President Reagan.’ At an intellectual level, Kohl insisted, Gorbachev saw ‘eye to eye with the president’ and wanted to ‘deepen contacts with the US and Bush personally.’ Kohl urged sending direct and personal messages to Gorbachev from time to time. This, he declared, would ‘signal the president’s confidence, which is a key word for Gorbachev, who places a high premium on “personal chemistry”’. Bush probably took it all with a pinch of salt – at the end, to quote the official US record, he merely ‘thanked the chancellor for his debrief and said he had listened very carefully’ – but the main point clearly registered.[102] (#litres_trial_promo)

At the weekend Bush had a chance to reflect on the week’s events. On 18 June, three days after talking with Kohl, he wrote in his diary: ‘I’m thinking in the back of my mind what we should do about meeting with Gorbachev. I want to do it; but I don’t want to get bogged down on arms control.’ Bush hoped that ‘some cataclysmic world event’ might occur to give him and Gorbachev the chance to ‘do something that shows cooperation’ and in the process ‘talk quietly’ without raising expectations of some dramatic breakthrough on arms control. In short, the president wanted a chat not a summit.[103] (#litres_trial_promo)

Bush’s visits to Poland and Hungary sharpened his awareness that reform might easily get out of hand and turn violent. He could not forget those images of Tiananmen Square, nor could he ignore Eastern Europe’s ‘traumatic uprisings’ of the past. If Eastern Europe was now in transition, this had to be managed by the superpowers: ‘to put off a meeting with Gorbachev was becoming dangerous’.[104] (#litres_trial_promo) And Mitterrand had rammed this very point home on 13 July, the eve of the G7, dismissing Bush’s concerns about finding a pretext without raising expectations. The French president said the two of them could ‘simply meet as presidents who had not yet met – to exchange views’.[105] (#litres_trial_promo)

The pressure from his European allies had become intense but Bush was both stubborn and circumspect: he had to make up his own mind in his own time. By mid-July 1989 he had finally done so. Seven months after his inauguration – having grown into the role of president and with his initial China opening now stalled – his focus was firmly on Europe and he had consolidated his own leadership position at the NATO summit in May and the recent G7. Bush had come a long way from that halting bit-part role on Governors Island in the wake of Gorbachev’s barnstorming performance in Manhattan. He now felt psychologically prepared to tangle with the Kremlin seducer.

This slow and deliberate approach to decision-making was characteristic of the Bush style, so different from that of Reagan, who had been nicknamed ‘the Great Communicator’ and ‘the Cowboy President’. There was no flamboyance or fireworks. Bush’s approach was more measured and pragmatic, based on long experience of government. Some commentators mistook Bush’s understated manner and preference for consultation as signs of weakness – an intimation, even, that America’s power was on the wane. But Bush understood cooperation, collegiality and persuasion to be the hallmarks of leadership and these required personal contact and the building of trust. By the time the G7 was over, Bush knew that these techniques had worked with his Western partners and he felt ready and able to try them out on his superpower counterpart, quietly confident that he could handle Gorbachev’s unsettling mixture of sweet talk and ‘one-upmanship’. Gorbachev had told Reagan that it took two to tango. Bush was now willing to join the dance.[106] (#litres_trial_promo)

On Air Force One, flying home from Europe, the president drafted a personal letter to Gorbachev to explain how, as he put it, ‘my thinking is changing’. Previously, he explained, he had felt that a meeting between them would have to produce major agreements, especially on arms control – not least because of the hopes of the ‘watching world’. But now, after seeing the Soviet bloc first-hand, holding ‘fascinating conversations’ with other world leaders in Paris, and learning about Gorbachev’s recent visits to France and West Germany, he felt it was vital for the two of them to develop a personal relationship, so as to ‘reduce the chances that there could be misunderstandings between us’.

The president thus proposed an informal, no-agenda encounter, ‘without thousands of assistants hovering over our shoulders, without the ever-present briefing papers and certainly without the press yelling at us every 5 minutes about “who’s winning”’ and whether or not the meeting was a success or failure. In fact, Bush added firmly ‘it would be best to avoid the word “summit”’ altogether. He hoped they could meet very soon but he did not want to put Gorbachev under any undue pressure.

By early August, to Bush’s satisfaction, Gorbachev had replied affirmatively to his proposal. But it would still take several weeks to sort out schedules and location.[107] (#litres_trial_promo)

*

Meanwhile, change in the once glacial Eastern Europe continued at an astonishing pace. As before, Poland was in the vanguard. The logjam over the new post of president suddenly broke. On 18 July Jaruzelski announced that he would actually be a candidate. Next day the combined houses of parliament met and voted in the general unopposed, albeit after a good deal of arm-twisting of recalcitrant Solidarity parliamentarians by their leaders. Jaruzelski promised to be a ‘president of consensus, a representative of all Poles’. It was, of course, bitterly ironic that this diehard communist and decade-long suppressor of the trade union movement was now appointed Poland’s president in the guise of a ‘reformer’ through a genuinely free vote essentially by those he had previously imprisoned. Many of the Solidarity rank and file were livid. But their political leadership argued that this was the best possible result in order to advance freedom while preserving stability. At the same time Jaruzelski’s narrowest of victories (he gained the necessary majority by one vote) showed who had the real legitimacy and political strength in the land: the freed workers, Solidarity.[108] (#litres_trial_promo)

The next step was to replace the caretaker government under Prime Minister Rakowski. According to the round-table agreement, Solidarity was meant to stay in opposition while a new communist-led government ran the country. But the dramatic election results of 4 June had made a mockery of that original springtime arrangement. In consequence, the communists now sought a grand coalition with Solidarity (not least to try to shrug off some of the responsibility for the deepening economic crisis). But Solidarity was split over this course; most of their members did not want to participate in a government in which Communists would rule. And in any case, they believed that the June election results had actually given them the mandate to govern the country.

In the event, on 2 August Jaruzelski nominated his fellow communist General Czesław Kiszczak as prime minister. But the latter failed to form a Cabinet – because the Communist Party’s allies, the Peasant Party and Democratic Alliance, refused to cooperate. And so it was Lech Wałęsa who announced that he would put together a Cabinet under the Solidarity banner. With this daring move Wałęsa went way beyond the round-table agreement. What was now a highly volatile political situation was compounded by growing instability in the first weeks of August, amid a new wave of strikes against rampant inflation and food shortages in the industrial south around Katowice and in the Baltic shipyards.

Jaruzelski was in a bind. Should he cave in and accept the accelerating pace of the political transition? Or should he stand firm and dissolve the legislature? New and unconstrained elections would undoubtedly spell total disaster for the communists. The US ambassador in Warsaw warned that Poland was now ‘right on the brink’. If the situation escalated, how long would ‘the decaying power elite fail to defend itself’? How to prevent a conservative backlash? Or even civil war?[109] (#litres_trial_promo)

Jaruzelski agonised for several days. What tipped him against a hard line was the prospect of political and economic chaos and also quiet but firm pressure from Gorbachev and the Kremlin. Wałęsa also made crucial concessions – promising that Poland would remain within the Warsaw Pact and offering the communists the key ministries of Defence and the Interior, in other words control of the army and the police. Both of these were important gestures to Moscow – or at least to the Moscow of 1956 and 1968, just in case that Cold War past was not as dead as Gorbachev claimed. Under these conditions Jaruzelski decided to take the step that would push Poland’s political system beyond anything being attempted elsewhere in the Eastern bloc – a ‘partnerlike cooperation’ between party and movement. The communist president accepted a Solidarity prime minister.[110] (#litres_trial_promo)

The editor of the opposition newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza – applying the ‘one for us and one for them’ rule – had a month earlier also proposed this solution in an opinion piece he entitled ‘Your president, our prime minister’. And so the chalice passed to Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a journalist and prominent Catholic layman since the 1950s. From the early days of Solidarity he had been a vital link between the progressive intelligentsia and the militant workers, and had worked as editor of Tygodnik Solidarność, the new Solidarity weekly, before being interned for a year under martial law. In 1988–9 he helped negotiate the end of the mass strikes and the construction of the round-table accords.[111] (#litres_trial_promo)

On 24 August, Mazowiecki was confirmed prime minister by the Sejm, including the votes of most of the communist deputies, who thus indicated their willingness in principle to serve under him. He had become the first non-communist head of government in Eastern Europe since the early post-war years, yet nobody in the West was too jubilant. ‘A historic step,’ said a US State Department official, but ‘there is no sense of gloating here’ considering the immense economic challenges Mazowiecki faced.[112] (#litres_trial_promo) In fact, the new Polish leader did not deny this, admitting ‘Nobody has previously taken the road that leads from socialism to capitalism.’[113] (#litres_trial_promo)

On the plus side, it took only three weeks for the new Polish PM to present his government to parliament – where it was approved unanimously by 402 votes to nil, with thirteen abstentions. Yet it was perhaps symbolic that the sixty-two-year-old Mazowiecki suffered a dizzy spell while delivering his opening speech on 12 September, which forced him to take a break for nearly an hour. When he returned to the stage, to thunderous applause, he joked: ‘Excuse me, but I have reached the same state as the Polish economy.’ After the laughter had died down, he added ‘I have recovered – and I hope the economy will recover too.’ At the end, Mazowiecki stood at the prime minister’s bench ‘as a man of Solidarity’, arms raised in triumph, flashing the two-fingered Solidarity victory sign.[114] (#litres_trial_promo)

Having fought each other for nearly a decade, Solidarity and communists were now working in uneasy collaboration, while most of the government bureaucracy simply remained in situ, adapting, often eagerly, to new goals and a fresh ethos. In place of the deadlocked triangle of Party–Solidarity–Church the country was now run by a novel configuration of forces: government, parliament and president, with Solidarity’s leading figurehead and strategist Lech Wałęsa looking on – effectively as president-in-waiting.

Although Poland’s ravaged economy had hardly begun to move from the Plan to the market, the first and crucial phase of political transition – guided but not defined by the round-table pact – had been concluded without conflict. There had been no civil war and no Soviet military intervention. This peaceful ‘refolution’ had a dynamic effect not only in Poland but also in other communist-ruled countries, signalling that the once inconceivable was now possible.

As events in Poland unfolded, the superpowers looked on as bystanders. To be sure, the State Department favoured a more adventurous and openly supportive policy. But the White House remained more guarded – placing the onus firmly on Warsaw. ‘Only the Poles can see that they succeed,’ Scowcroft told CNN when asked why the president was not rushing to offer the Poles more aid. ‘We can help, but we can only help if money goes into structures which can make it used properly.’ His message was clear: let’s wait and see. Bush felt it ‘important to act carefully and to avoid pouring money down a rat-hole’.[115] (#litres_trial_promo)

As for the USSR, Gorbachev appeared to cling to the illusion that the ‘democratising socialism’ of Poland and Hungary had a future. Be that as it may, the Kremlin had neither the will nor the resources to police Eastern Europe in the style of Stalin, Khrushchev or Brezhnev. In any case, Gorbachev was being severely challenged just to hold on to power at home and keep the Soviet Union together. He was now operating within a very different political system, the consequence of the USSR’s first free election since 1917. Having persuaded the Communist Party to abolish the Supreme Soviet and create a functioning parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, in March 1989, he found that this triumph of perestroikacreated a more independent body that gradually undermined his power. As biographer William Taubman observed, he was ‘replacing the old political “game”, at which he excelled, with a new one that he never really mastered’. In the process new nationalist, even secessionist, energies were set loose as more and more power was devolved to the republics. These centrifugal forces emerged dramatically in Georgia – prompting the intervention of the Red Army in Tbilisi in April, when twenty-one people were killed – and became even more visible as far as Europe was concerned in the Baltic States on the USSR’s western rim.[116] (#litres_trial_promo)

On 23 August, the day before Mazowiecki was confirmed as Poland’s premier, an estimated 2 million people formed a human chain some 400 miles right across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Stalin’s pact with Hitler in 1939 that assigned these three Baltic States, independent since 1918, to the Soviet Union. The ‘Baltic Chain’ or ‘Chain of Freedom’ was a graphic reminder that the USSR and the Soviet empire had been held together by force. Both the Polish Assembly and the Polish Communist Party publicly condemned the Pact, as had Gorbachev himself just a few days before. But none of them was, as yet, willing to grapple with the logical implication of their words. The Pact had pulled not only the Baltic States within the USSR but also much of eastern Poland. Denouncing Stalinist policies was therefore not simply a political act; it was another sign that the Soviet bloc’s burgeoning revolution was also opening up buried questions about European geopolitics – questions that affected basic relations between the superpowers.[117] (#litres_trial_promo)