Perestroika and Germany: the truth behind the myths by Hans Modrow & Bruno Mahlow

Author:Hans Modrow & Bruno Mahlow [Modrow, Hans]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Artery Publications with Marx Memorial Library
Published: 2014-06-01T22:00:00+00:00

HAPTER FIVE

The CPSU and Relations with the SED

Between the central committees and different departments of the governing parties within the communist bloc, relationships were traditionally good and diverse. There were regular consultations at leadership and at lower levels. There were noticeably fewer once Gorbachev came on the scene with his policies of perestroika and the New Thinking. As a result, the SED leadership also reduced direct contacts, and after 1987, visits of delegations who went to the Soviet Union for study purposes decreased significantly. The most affected areas were those of ideology, media and culture, but also in the economic field relations cooled down considerably. On the Soviet side that did not go unnoticed and they investigated via their inofficial information channels.

So, in the summer of 1988, Medvedev, a member of the Politburo and secretary to the central committee, spent his holidays in the GDR. In Berlin he met friends, including Günter Sieber, head of thei department of international relations of the Central Committee of the SED. And he travelled to Dresden to see the reconstructed Semper Opera House and to visit the Dresden Art Gallery, but he actually came to see me. I got to know Medvedev during my work in the Central Committee while he was working in the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Previously, he had been Secretary for Ideological Work in the Leningrad regional committee, Gorbachev brought him into the Politburo. Today he works for Gorbachev’s foundation, but our friendly relationship remains unchanged.

I don’t know whether our talks had any consequence after his return to Moscow. No noticeable influence on developments in the socialist countries came from Medvedev; and how strongly his impressions and information impressed Gorbachev is not documented either, nor was it visible from his reactions. Maybe he also interpreted a number of things differently to me. I remember, for example, a hike together in the Crimea in the summer of 1990. A dozen young people were with us, a tourist guide was also there and the obligatory personal security – Medvedev, after all, was a member of the Politburo. We hiked unencumbered through the beautiful countryside and spoke openly about the then current problems. Perhaps it was the blue skies or his naivety, but Medvedev said everything would turn out well, even if it was currently a bit stormy, but Moscow had the matter under control, nothing was getting out of hand... When we met again at the Gorbachev Foundation in December 1992, he admitted self-critically, that what he had said at the time during that Crimean holiday was somewhat illusionary.

Honecker met Gorbachev twice in 1989. He had been invited to Magnitogorsk in June, because in 1930, as an 18 year-old Communist, he had worked a few months on the construction of the steel mill there. During his stopover in Moscow, an interview with the CPSU General Secretary took place, and there is a 30 page report on this meeting. Reading it reveals that Gorbachev was clearly trying to

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