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Economics

Вспоминая о падении Стены

Nov 4, 1999 Helmut Kohl

БЕРЛИН: О падении Берлинской Стены я узнал десять лет тому назад в ходе официального визита в Польшу. Вечером 9 ноября премьер-министр Тадеуш Мазовецкий пригласил нашу делегацию на банкет, который должен был состояться в бывшем дворце принца Радзвиля. Перед началом банкета из Бонна позвонил секретарь канцелярии Рудольф Зельтер. Он сообщил, что районный председатель коммунистического Восточного Берлина внезапно объявил о введении временного регулирования, позволяющего путешествия частных граждан. Разрешение посетить Запад было выдано всем, подавшим заявления, даже уведомившим о своем желании за короткий срок.

Это простое решение дало мне понять о скором приближении перемен в истории Германии, поскольку упрощение порядка путешествий означало, что Стена становилась проходимой для каждого. Однако, поначалу я не сумел предугадать те захватывающие и радостные ночные праздненства, которые вот-вот должны были разразиться в Берлине.

За всю свою карьеру я никогда не сомневался в том, что в один прекрасный день Германия вновь обретет единство. Но я даже и мечтать не мог о том, чтобы объединение Востока и Запада случилось во время моего пребывания на посту канцлера. Лишь благодаря Михаилу Горбачеву и его политике перестройки и гласности унификация Германии стала реальной возможностью. Без Горбачева и его исключительной отваги тот шквал событий, прокатившийся по Европе осенью 1989 года, никогда бы не разразился.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 3 Comments on this article

Alisdair Hamilton-Wilkes Jun 19, 2017

A great deal of his legacy is still in play….

When Emanuel Macron reveals his great reforms for the Euro Zone, I can hear 75 million Germans exclaiming ‘but Helmut Kohl promised us this would never happen…’
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j. von Hettlingen Jun 17, 2017

The late Helmut Kohl penned this commentary in 1999, ten years after East Germany opened the Berlin Wall that would eventually lead to German reunification in 1990. He highlighted in details his interactions with the then Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, who took the credit for "his foresight and bravery," that wrote world history. Facing the "choice of leaving the tanks in their barracks or calling them out onto the streets," Gorbachev "opted for a peace."
On November 9, 1989, while East Germans rejoiced over the fall of the Berlin Wall, Vladimir Putin, a 36 year-old KGB officer based in Dresden, was watching the tumultous scenes, which had later come to shape his world views. For someone who believed deeply in the Cold War order, it was an excruciating experience. Putin returned home soon afterwards in disgust, full of bitterness that lingers to this day, reiterating on many occasions that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.
Once described as the greatest European leader in the second half of the 20th Century, Kohl was a passionate supporter of greater European integration and one of the main architects of the Maastricht Treaty. Together with his closest ally, France's President François Mitterrand, Kohl shaped the federal ideal of the European Union and laid the groundwork for the creation of the single currency.
Thanks to its economic and political power, Germany witnessed a golden era in the 1980s. In 1987 Kohl received the East German leader, Erich Honecker - a groundbreaking visit that was part of his detente with the East - something his party had firmly rejected just 20 years earlier. Kohl sensed that Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika to reform the Soviet Union would fail, and he persuaded the Soviet leader to withdraw from East Germany, while allowing a reunited Germany to remain a member of Nato. This was approved in July 1990 and Germany was reunited later in October. But the huge economic costs of reunification led to a downturn throughout Germany. It robbed him of some of the popularity he enjoyed, particularly in the former East, which suffered an economic collapse, with high rates of poverty and unemployment.
Abroad, the reunification was viewed with apprehension by Israel. European countries welcomed it, while smaller countries to the east had concerns about a dominating Germany. But Kohl was able to convince Gorbachev and George HW Bush that a united Germany would not destabilise or threaten Europe the way Nazi Germany did. He also had a strained relationship with the UK and other countries that did not share his vision of a federal Europe. Margaret Thatcher is said to be furious in December 1989 after she was obliged to sign a communique supporting German reunification.
Kohl's political career came to an inglorious end when Gerhard Schröder won the 1998 election. This marked the beginning of his misfortune. Dogged by a scandal in which he had accepted, for his party, millions of dollars of secret political donations, his reputation was badly damaged. The suicide of his first wife and a fall resulted in a head injury in 2008 left him infirm and in a wheelchair. But his legacy is being well remembered by Europe's youngest leader, Emmanuel Macron, who praised Kohl for his role both in unifying Germany and in cementing Franco-German friendship. Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, ordered flags at the European Union to be lowered to half-staff in Kohl’s honor. May he rest in peace.
- Derrick Baragwanath Jun 18, 2017
  
  This is an excellent addendum to the main article, which helps put it in context. Very informative. Well done.
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