With equal force, he condemned all who would like to create a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals by abolishing socialist governments in the Soviet satellites. In Germany, he had already said that the USSR was aiming at the creation of a “socialist market system.” Now, in France, he warned the world not to expect the East to “return to the capitalist fold … this is unreal thinking and even dangerous.” With that much understood, however, he also signaled that he did not mind the idea of a multiparty system.
When Gorbachev returned home to Moscow, by no means did he leave the field to the Group of Seven. In fact, it was in the midst of their Paris summit that he made his most direct and audacious move. He interfered with the deliberations of the Group of Seven—to say he dominated those deliberations would not be a great exaggeration—by the unheard-of tactic of sending them a letter.
Dated July 14—Bastille Day on the calendar of French history—Gorbachev’s letter was addressed to French President Mitterrand as the head of the nation hosting the Group of Seven meeting. But it was read to all the visiting heads of state, President Bush among them. And in terms of its far-reaching implications, as well as in terms of headline-stealing media coverage, it was as big a bombshell as his December speech in New York had been.
Gorbachev’s proposals in that letter were skillfully calculated and were hinged upon his geopolitical outlook. The Soviet Union, he said in essence, intends to join the West’s efforts at mutual economic cooperation. “The formation of a cohesive world economy implies that their multilateral economic partnership be placed on a qualitatively new level.”
What new level? Nothing less than a direct association of the Soviet Union in the Group of Seven and in the Europe they planned for 1992 and beyond.
“Multilateral East-West cooperation on global economic problems is far behind the development of bilateral ties,” Gorbachev declared. “This state of things does not appear justified, taking account of the weight our countries have in the world economy.” It was one thing to make a European union out of twelve nations. But wouldn’t a union between the USSR and its client states in Eastern Europe, on the one hand, and the twelve Western European nations, on the other hand, make more sense? More economic sense? More financial profit sense?
Having opened with his bold and sweeping geopolitical platform, as he had done at the United Nations, Gorbachev proceeded in his letter to make proposals that, if implemented, would radically alter the planned course of European union. He proposed beginning with “meetings of government experts” to develop “a common economic language” and to exchange information on areas including economic development and lines of credit and aid to the Third World.
Gorbachev’s aim was clear: “The world can only gain from the opening up of a market as big as the Soviet Union.” And he drove his intention home in what can be described as a diplomatic oath: “Our perestroika is inseparable from a policy aiming at our full participation in the world economy … within our common European home.”
The shock of the Group of Seven at receiving Gorbachev’s stunning challenge was so palpable it was felt in public. President Mitterrand tried to laugh it off with a Gallic twist. We can sit and talk in the living room of “our common European home,” he joked; perhaps we can even troop out to the kitchen and “have a snack together.” But let’s wait “before we retire to the master bedroom.” President Bush was somewhat more conservative in his use of a similar image. They could, of course, “wander from room to room” and that sort of thing. But “anything else” would be premature just now.
They might have saved their breath. Gorbachev wasn’t after a bawdy interlude or a tour of the house. Not even a shotgun marriage would do. He wanted everything. And, for some, his timing only highlighted yet again his lightning-quick perception of how best to follow up his own advantage.
Pope John Paul, for one, read Gorbachev’s reasoning and his action as a textbook exercise in geopolitics. Gorbachev had made a deep thrust at the heart of the Internationalist-Transnationalist program. He had made that thrust in their own terms and pretty much in their own tripod language of trade, finance and military security. And finally, he had used a double-edged sword to do it.
On the one hand, Gorbachev’s perestroika was the only solution for his own internal Soviet problems. On the other hand, the Group of Seven could not afford a return to the pre-Gorbachev status quo between East and West. But if perestroika should fail, that would be the only alternative.
“The old artificial barriers between different economic systems are being liquidated,” Gorbachev had said. Therefore, the economic system of the East could not be left out in the cold. It was no longer possible to fall back on the Kennan doctrine. And so another fundamental policy of the West—the long-planned European Economic Community—had become vulnerable to fundamental change at Gorbachev’s say-so and at his timing. Gorbachev had become the active agent in international life. Other nations assumed the role of reactors. But the initiative was in his hands.
In Gorbachev’s geopolitical perspective, the time was right for his boldest step of all. “It is virtually impossible,” he had said at the United Nations, “for any society to be ‘closed.’” He had disposed of the doctrine of containment. He had hinted in Germany at the creation of new conditions that would make current “border obstructions obsolete.” He had issued a put-up-or-shut-up challenge to the Group of Seven.
Secure in his own position within the Party-State structure—still comprising General Secretary, KGB and Red Army—and having secured at least to some degree the partnership of the West, as well, Gorbachev headed full swing into the rearrangement of the Eastern satellite nations needed to fit the reordering of human affairs for which he was preparing.
All during his challenges to the West nations, in fact, he had been taking parallel actions that made it stunningly clear that he was already following the path of his own challenges. At home in the Soviet Union and all throughout the Eastern satellites, events that made observers very jittery indeed confirmed that this was a Soviet leader who meant what he said, even if he took his own sweet time to follow through with actions matching his words.
Geopolitically, John Paul realized in 1988, it made no sense—and he knew his fellow geopolitician Mikhail Gorbachev would have the same realization—for the Soviet president to have lunged so decisively at including the USSR in “a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals,” and presumed at the same time to leave the Soviet empire as it was: a Gulag Archipelago with many Gulags tied to it. That proposal would merely evoke all the “old thinking” of East versus West. There would be no “new thinking.” The two adversarial structures would still stand. No common structure housing East and West would be possible; and, in the end, Gorbachev’s perestroika (reconstruction) would devolve into perestrelka (a shooting war).
The script to be followed in Gorbachev’s upcoming diplomatic maneuver for 1989 had to be crafted by him in such a way that it evoked the “new thinking” in the West but did not imperil his own position of power in the USSR. In this doubleheaded play, John Paul could see that his own Poland and the other satellites could very well become helpless pawns but with a capital role to fulfill in the diplomatic maneuvering to come.
Already, at the opening of 1989, when it became clear that Gorbachev would be coming to Italy on a state visit in December, the question arose naturally: Why shouldn’t Pope and Soviet president meet? “That,” answered one Vatican aide softly to a reporter’s query, “makes for interesting speculation.” But if the Pope was going to admit the Soviet representative into his Vatican and sit down with him, it must not be seen or turn out to be merely one more of those “nice-to-have-seen-you-because-you-didn’t-bite-my-hand-off” encounters, as Harry Hopkins once described his first meeting with Joseph Stalin.
The Vatican had already had numerous encounters of that type with Soviets. Beginning with Nikita Khrushchev’s birthday greetings to Pope John XXIII on November 25, 1961, there was a series of Vatican-Kr
emlin “contacts”: the visit of Khrushchev’s son-in-law, Aleksei Adzhubei, editor of Moscow’s Izvestia, in 1962; Pope Paul VI’s brief encounters with Soviets at the United Nations in 1965, his reception of Soviet President Nikolai V. Podgorny in 1967 and his by-the-bye short contacts with other Soviets and Communist bully boys from the Eastern European satellites in the Vatican on four further occasions. John Paul met with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko twice (January 24, 1979, and February 27, 1985) for substantial conversations. But in 1984, when the Pope wished to visit Lithuania, he was refused permission. So much for such encounters! John Paul needed them no more. He would not again be on the “asking-for-permission” end of the stick.
Consequently, in 1988, when the already bouncy Mikhail Gorbachev invited Papa Wojtyla to come “with all the other religious leaders” to the “Moscow Celebration” of 1988, John Paul refused, sending instead seven cardinals (led by Secretary of State Agostino Cardinal Casaroli, bearing a letter expressing the Pope’s complaints). Casaroli had a ninety-minute interview with Gorbachev and another talk with Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, during which he let both men feel the steel beneath the smooth glove of romanità. The maneuvering had begun.
Gorbachev desired a much-publicized summit with the Holy Father. He now realized who this man was and what he represented. He was no mere prelate like the subservient Patriarch of Moscow or his fellow Orthodox prelates, who had gone along with the atrocious treatment meted out to religion by Gorbachev’s predecessors. He was an international figure, a potentate with overwhelming moral influence. And he was a Pole of the Poles. If anyone could help smooth Gorbachev’s path with the Catholics in Lithuania and the Ukraine—both potential trouble spots for Gorbachev—it was Papa Wojtyla. Besides, this Pontiff was a card-carrying member of the Western “establishment.” A summit with him was a must for Gorbachev’s credentials as the newest—if unexpected—candidate at that club’s door.
So the maneuvering into desirable and mutually acceptable positions began, accompanied by the usual signals. John Paul started “talking at” Gorbachev while actually talking with third parties—Poles, Czechs, Lithuanians, Ukrainians. In February 1989, the Soviets restored the Cathedral of Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, to the Catholics, and the hierarchy was expanded. The same month, John Paul gave the go-ahead signal for Polish bishops to sit in a joint committee with Communist government delegates in order to outline a new relationship between Church and State in Poland. By June, the Vatican and Warsaw had agreed to establish diplomatic relations; the fifty-nine-year-old CPP Central Committee member Jerzy Kuberski became Poland’s ambassador to John Paul; the fifty-one-year-old Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk became John Paul’s representative in Warsaw. “I have done it [helped the reforms in Poland],” John Paul said with an eastward glance, “as part of my universal mission, and it should be seen as this…. It is integrated in my mission as it is integrated in the historical evolution of the world.” This was a message in diplomatic language destined for the listening Gorbachev, and it told him: “What I do in my papal backyard of Poland today has significance only in your whole context.”
Third-party intermediaries then sounded out the probability/possibility of a Wojtyla-Gorbachev summit in December. The Vatican reaction was a “Yes-of-course-but” answer. In July, Gorbachev (mindful of the Pope’s complaints) sent another signal: He allowed John Paul to nominate a Catholic bishop in Byelorussia—the first such appointment in sixty-three years. John Paul forthwith instructed his “foreign minister,” Archbishop Angelo Sodano, to start negotiating about a possible meeting with the Soviet president during his already planned state visit to Italy.
Meanwhile, within weeks of his December 1988 speech at the United Nations, and all through that spring and early summer of 1989, headlines around the world began to take on a stunned and breathless tone in their effort to keep up with the pace of Gorbachevism at home. A mere sampling of the headline news, when reread today, still evokes wonder at the skilled guidance and staging of events—all the more remarkable because Gorbachev was dealing with volatile forces of popular passion and nationalist sentiments. Gorbachev’s repertoire of reassuring happenings for jittery observers was bottomless.
[March] Leningrad’s Communist Party Left in Tatters [after the elections of March] … Gorbachev Hails People’s Power … Soviets Agree to Discuss Terrorism, Drugs and Environmental Issues … KGB Head Vladimir A. Kryuchov Meets with Jack F. Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to Moscow … Gorbachev Condemns Stalin’s Farm Collectivization, Proposes to Return Farms to Families … Gorbachev Sanctions New Proposed Laws About Religion, Religious Education, Religious Services, Free Publication of Religious Books, and Church Activity in Charitable Works … Free Soviet Elections … Soviet Insurgents Bask in Victory’s Glow …
[April] Kremlin Proposes a Sweeping Purge of Corrupt Members from Its Top Leadership … Soviet Communist Party Need Not Dominate in the Satellite Nations of Eastern Europe … Change Is Urgent, Gorbachev Insists … U.S. and Moscow to Exchange Diplomatic Experts … Soviets, After 33 Years, Publish Khrushchev’s Anti-Stalin Speech … Bells Are Ringing as Soviets Return Churches to Faithful … Hungarian Communist Official Says Top Priority Is to Institutionalize Political Pluralism … Moscow Imports Consumer Goods to Appease Public … Soviet Political Upstarts Form a Coalition … Gorbachev Plans to Stop Producing Uranium for Weapons … Soviet Newspapers Announce the Finding of the Remains of the Slain Czar and His Family … [May] Twenty Washington Experts Say “Gorbachev Is for Real” … U.S. and Russians Working Together Quietly in Exploring Space … KGB Is Seeking a Friendly, More Upbeat Image … Polls Find Gorbachev’s Rule Eases American Minds on Soviets … Soviets Print Report Saying Stalin Agreed to Split Poland with Hitler … Lithuanian Legislature Declared That the Republic Wanted Independence …
[June] KGB Head Says New Soviet Legislature Should Ride Herd on the KGB … Ex-KGB Head Vladimir Semichastny Says Former General Secretary Yuri Andropov Carried Out Stalin’s Purges [killings] and Turned a Blind Eye to Corruption … “The bloody history of the main building [KGB headquarters] on Dzherzhinsky Street [Moscow] is too unforgivable. This is the place from which orders went out for the destruction and persecution of millions. This service [KGB] sowed grief, cries of agony, torture and misery all over its native land” [Yuri Vlasov speaking in the New Soviet Congress] … Pointed Questions for Chief of KGB before Soviet Legislature; He Hears Denunciations … Siberian Miners’ Strike Spreads as Authorities Make Concessions … Hungary Dismantles the Entire 150-Mile Barbed-Wire Curtain Between It and Austria …
The headlines about Poland were “quite unbelievable,” commented the Frankfurter Zeitung. For those with memories, they were:
[April] Solidarity Gets Full Legal Status … Polish Parliament Agrees to Talks with Solidarity … “Poland Has Joined Europe,” Says Lech Walesa …
[May] Communist Poland Acknowledges Soviet-Nazi Pact on Its Fate … “Poland now has a new possibility allowing for transformation in the social, political, economic and moral life of the entire society” [John Paul II] …
[June] Gazeta, First Independently Published Newspaper in the Soviet Bloc … Solidarity’s Overwhelming Victory [in national elections] … Communists Call for Coalition with Solidarity … Warsaw Accepts Solidarity’s Sweep [in elections] and Humiliating Losses by the Party … Polish Communist Official Admits the Massacres of Polish Officers by Stalin’s Direct Orders [4,254 at Katyn; 3,841 at Degachi; 6,376 at Bolugaye] in June 1940 … Solidarity Seeking $10 Billion in Relief for Poland … Solidarity Has Accepted Responsibility for the Country … France to Give a New Bank Loan to Poland [$1.15 billion for reconstruction, $110 million in further loans] … “Solidarity doesn’t need to rule, only to exercise control and to broaden democracy” [Lech Walesa] … Walesa to Back Any Communist President …
All of these quick-fire happenings, besides evoking wonderment, satisified a certain hunger in the West, where governments, commentators and the ordinary public desired to see chang
es in the Soviet empire, changes that would reassure them the East-West tension was truly gone. But all of what had happened so far in 1989 turned out to be a mere prelude to the heady wine the Soviet president was about to proffer his hoped-for cohabitants in the House of the New Order in “a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals.” John Paul could already write the geopolitical script of the forthcoming Gorbachev menu for the remaining months of 1989 and into the decade of the 1990s.
Beginning in August and ending in December, all six satellite nations are convulsed in change. On August 19, strongman Wojciech Jaruzelski designates senior Solidarity official Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the first non-Communist prime minister of Poland since 1948. On September 10, Hungary opens its borders with Austria to allow hordes of East Germans access to West Germany (almost 200,000 crossed over by early November). On October 17, the Hungarian Communist Party disbands and drops the name Communist from its self-description. János Kádár, old-time Stalinist, had departed from the leadership on May 22. On October 17, the new Hungarian parliament rewrites the Constitution, allowing a multiparty system and free elections.
That August, too, Wojtyla-Gorbachev contacts and signals multiplied. On August 24, Yuri E. Karlov, personal representative of Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, hand-carried a message from Gorbachev, declaring his “readiness for further development” of Vatican-Kremlin relations. He also mentioned “drastic issues”—the environment, nuclear war, world hunger—that needed airing between the two leaders. John Paul responded that he was going to send Archbishop Sodano to Moscow for discussions.
The next day, three Russian Orthodox metropolitans arrived at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope’s summer home fifteen miles south of Rome, to discuss the problems existing between Russian Orthodox prelates and the Catholics of the Ukraine. In 1946, the Russian Orthodox Church had acquiesced in the massacre or deportation of all Catholic prelates, had also taken over Catholic churches and institutions. What was going to happen now? Already the Orthodox could see from afar that a reckoning day was drawing near. But the price: to hand back their ill-gotten gains? Negotiation, replied John Paul, and, of course, some restitution.
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