Revolution 1989

by Victor Sebestyen

  Mazowiecki seemed an uninspiring choice for such a historic role. Yet it was precisely his virtues of modesty, humility and solidity that thrust his name forward, so different was he from Lech Wałesa. The other options would have been riskier - particularly fifty-five-year-old Jacek Kurón, one of the founding fathers of Polish opposition, who had been an active dissident since the 1960s. He had a brilliant analytical mind and shining integrity, but Wałesa thought he would have been too radical a choice. Bronisław Geremek, now fifty-seven, was moderate enough and had been an influential adviser to the independent trade union since Solidarity was founded. Latterly an academic, for a short while he followed a diplomatic career and was dispatched, as a young official, to the Polish Embassy in Paris. But he became disillusioned with the Party and returned to his fourteenth-century manuscripts. He was a shrewd political tactician and a tough negotiator, but argumentative and quick to take offence, thought Wałesa.

  Mazowiecki was a safe bet. He was widely respected in Poland and abroad. After his release from jail in 1984 he had been allowed to travel and he was a powerful advocate in the West for Solidarity’s cause. The clinching factor was that, unlike the other two, he was a devout Catholic who had excellent contacts at the Vatican and with the Polish episcopate. There was one problem, though. Mazowiecki was publicly against Solidarity forming a government. Generally he had good relations with Wałesa, even when they disagreed. Sometimes he thought the former electrician was too high-handed and dictatorial, but he invariably trusted his judgement about people and strategy. Wałesa felt sure he could work his charm and persuade Mazowiecki that a Solidarity government was now the only sensible course and that he, Mazowiecki, was the right man to lead it.

  The seduction, as Mazowiecki once described it, not entirely as a joke, took place on the evening of 18 August at a dinner in the dismal restaurant of the faded but once grand Europejski Hotel, on the edge of Warsaw’s Old Town. Initially, Mazowiecki made a show of not wanting the job, and insisted that Wałesa should take it. Then he said he would accept the post on condition that Wałesa would allow him a free hand and would ‘not try to run things from behind the scenes’. He did not want the entourage around Wałesa trying to place pressure on him either. He wanted to be his own man. He insisted on choosing his team of ministers, with nobody looking over his shoulder. Wałesa agreed to keep in the background, but said he would always be available to co-operate.1

  Jaruzelski was still brooding about being the Polish Communist who lost power. He remained a True Believer, even though the entire edifice of Soviet authority which he so admired was falling apart. He accepted Mazowiecki’s appointment. He respected him. Jaruzelski insisted that his two close friends and associates, Generals Kiszczak and Siwicki, retain their posts at the Interior Ministry and Defence. Cardinal Glemp strongly approved of the choice and the Pope was delighted. He invited the new PM for an audience at the Vatican to receive a blessing.

  Rakowski, Poland’s last Communist Party leader, had a thirty-five-minute telephone conversation with Gorbachev on the morning of 22 August. He had once told Jaruzelski during martial law in 1982 that the Party could not maintain its position for ever and ‘sooner or later we’ll have to live with them, I’m afraid’. Most Communists would have thought he was talking nonsense, back then. Now it was Gorbachev who told him, ‘You must learn to live with them. There is no other alternative but to accept the new government. Maybe we aren’t very happy about it, but it has to be done. We will support the line of agreement pursued by Jaruzelski.’ Policy would change only if Solidarity - which throughout the conversation he continued to call ‘the opposition’ - specifically turned on the USSR, which he did not think likely. He said he was ‘astonished’ by the Polish Party, ‘which has shown itself to be crap. You’ll have to rebuild it entirely from the bottom up. You’ll never accomplish anything with the lot you have now.’ Rakowski asked if he could go to Moscow for a meeting. This was a normal request for a new Communist Party chief in one of the satellite states and was usually granted as a matter of course. But things had changed. Gorbachev said, ‘That’s not a good idea now. It would look as though we are trying to interfere in Polish affairs.’2

  Mazowiecki changed his mind about governing with Party men still in control of the army and police. ‘Is it more dangerous to have a Communist general in your house, or leave him out of doors? It was clear to me that if the Party was not represented one way or another in the government . . . reforms could not be carried through in a peaceful manner.’ The rest of the team was mostly made up of former dissidents, like the economist Balcerowicz, who became Finance Minister, determined to institute his ‘shock therapy’. The emotion of the moment when Mazowiecki became the first post-Communist Prime Minister of a Soviet bloc country nearly overcame him. He wept as he shook the hand, politely, of every member of the old government of Party officials. Most of them looked bemused. Then he kissed Geremek, newly elected leader of the Solidarity group of MPs, on both cheeks. At his home in Gdaek, Wałesa was filmed watching the event. It had taken nearly ten years, but power had irreversibly been wrested from the Polish Communists - and from their Soviet masters. He beamed an enormous smile from behind his walrus moustache and flashed a V for Victory sign.

  In a clever move, the philosopher Jacek Kurón, an inspirational figure behind the KOR group and Solidarity, was appointed Minister for Labour. He had first been jailed in 1969 for writing samizdat articles attacking the regime. Early on the morning after his appointment, as he was shaving, Kuro received an urgent phone call from a neighbour warning him that a car was spotted outside his apartment building on Mickiewicz Street, a fashionable part of Warsaw. This had happened many times in the last twenty years. Invariably the car was a secret policeman’s and the telephone call was to give Kuro some time to put a few things in a bag before he was arrested and taken away to prison. Kurowas surprised. He had only been in government for a few hours. Surely they might have given him longer than that before locking him up. This time it turned out to be his ministerial car and his chauffeur.3

  FORTY-TWO

  REFUGEES

  Schloss Gymnich, Bonn, Friday 25 August 1989

  SOON AFTER 7 A.M., amid the utmost secrecy, the Hungarian Prime Minister, Miklós Németh, and the Foreign Minister, Gyula Horn, flew from Budapest to Bonn. They wanted as few people as possible to know their destination: a medieval castle twenty-five kilometres south of the West German capital, where the FRG government often con ducted high-level diplomatic conferences. Two days earlier, Németh had asked the Hungarian Ambassador to Bonn, István Horváth, to set up a meeting for him as soon as it could be arranged with the West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl. ‘We didn’t say what it was about,’ Németh said. ‘ All we told them was that it was very important, not only to us, but to them.’ The Hungarians made a further request - for absolute discretion. In particular, they did not want the East Germans to hear until later that the meeting had taken place.

  After dithering for several weeks, Németh had finally made a firm decision about how he would handle the refugee crisis confronting Hungary. He wanted the West Germans to be the first to know. He got to the heart of the matter straight away. His opening words to Kohl were: ‘We have decided to allow the GDR citizens to leave freely, mainly on humanitarian grounds. It seems you may have to deal with 100,000 or even 150,000 new citizens arriving very quickly.’ At first Kohl and West Germany’s long-serving Foreign Minister, Hans Dietrich Genscher, were sceptical. It was too good to be true, or so they thought, a vindication of West German policy for forty years and a hammer blow to the regime in Berlin.

  Németh explained that there were powerful domestic reasons for the decision, as well as humanitarian considerations. Hungary could not cope with the weight of numbers arriving into the country. ‘We cannot wait for a decision much longer and this is our best option. Already some refugees have been clashing with our border guards,’ he explained. Undoubtedly there would be more incidents of the kind un
less action was taken speedily. The West Germans were partially persuaded, but needed more convincing. Genscher had suffered a heart attack just five weeks earlier and had left his sick-bed for these talks. He had vast experience of negotiating with officials from the Eastern bloc and he asked the crux question: did the Soviets know? ‘No they don’t know, yet, and we won’t inform them until you tell us that preparations have been made on your side,’ Németh replied. He told them that he was sure the Soviets would make no objection. When the Russians said the border question was a matter for us to deal with they meant it, he insisted.

  The two West German politicians began to believe the extraordinary news they were hearing. Most Germans, from East or West, had longed for the day the Wall no longer divided them. The moment was fast drawing nearer. Invariably an ebullient figure, Kohl started to beam good cheer. Genscher recalled later that his convalescence speeded up once he became convinced that the Hungarians were genuine. They began to discuss the details. Németh told them that his government would make one final effort to persuade the East Germans to grant the refugees permission to leave, but he did not expect much success. If they refused, his lawyers said, Hungary could ‘suspend’ the bilateral Berlin/Budapest agreement on travel permits, arguing that conditions had materially changed since it was signed. The West Germans pledged that they would hastily organise reception centres and transport for the refugees. They would even make an exception in this case, and allow Trabis into the country, which under normal circumstances would fail West German pollution regulations.1

  The big controversy about the Schloss Gymnich conference has been over the question: did Hungary receive money to open the border for the East Germans? The claim has persisted that a DM 1 billion loan on generous and flexible terms was agreed. There is nothing in the records of the meeting to suggest that it was and the Hungarians have always denied it. Németh said that ‘two or three times at the meeting the Chancellor asked me, “Now what do you want as a gesture from me?” I felt, he thought I was asking for money, so I said “No, no money, I am not asking you”.’ In fact, Németh said, he asked the West German government publicly to rescind a loan agreement the Hungarians were at that time negotiating with FRG banks. ‘I did not want it to be perceived by the public - Hungarian or international - that we were doing this for money. We were not.’ Nevertheless, five weeks later a line of credit up to DM 1 billion was made available to Hungary - DM 500 million from the Federal government and the rest from the provincial government of North Rhine-Westphalia.2

  Immediately after the meeting Kohl spoke to Gorbachev. He was satisfied the Hungarians were telling him the truth as they saw it, but he wanted to make sure there was no misunderstanding. He did not wish to provoke a confrontation with the USSR over the East German refugees. Would the Soviets really accept this arrangement that breached the Iron Curtain? Gorbachev acquiesced in a roundabout way and offered this observation about the refugee crisis: ‘Yes, the Hungarians are good people.’3

  Breaking the news to the East Germans was altogether less agreeable, from the Hungarian perspective. Six days after the Schloss Gymnich talks, Foreign Minister Horn went to Berlin for a showdown with the GDR government. Honecker was still recovering from surgery and the Prime Minister, seventy-five-year-old Willi Stoph, was also unwell. Horn met Oskar Fischer, his East German counterpart, on the morning of Thursday 31 August. From the first, the encounter did not go well. Horn had built a liberal reputation, from the summer of 1989, based on his role in opening the border for the East German refugees. But initially the canny fifty-seven-year-old was ambivalent about letting them leave for the West. For many weeks he prevaricated and hedged his bets. He was an ambitious man, a moderate, who was persuaded that it was the right thing to do only when he was convinced the majority in the Hungarian leadership approved the idea. Then he sold the policy enthusiastically and believed it was his own.

  When they met, Fischer insisted that Hungary must stick to the spirit and letter of the 1969 Treaty between the two countries. Horn replied that it would be best if East and West Germany came to an agreement. Then Fischer repeated the pledge that if the refugees returned of their own volition to East Germany now ‘they would face no punishment’. Horn said that ‘the refugees do not believe your government’. When he added that the Hungarians would within a few days let all the refugees leave for the West, Fischer exploded. ‘That’s treachery. You are leaving the GDR in the lurch and joining the other side. This will have grave consequences for you.’ Later in the day Horn had an equally bitter meeting with the East German economics chief, Günter Mittag, at which he said that Hungary did not want poor relations with the GDR but there could be ‘no inhumane solutions to this problem’.4

  The East German regime vented more steam. It fired off angry notes to Budapest and to Moscow. But it realised there was little it could do if the Russians would not come down on the GDR’s side. Fischer suggested that all the Warsaw Pact foreign ministers go to Berlin and together they could lean on the Hungarians. But the Poles flatly refused and Shevardnadze did not want to go. Without the Soviets, there was no point in holding the summit. When the Berlin Party chieftains met on the morning of Tuesday 5 September there was a mood of bitterness and of capitulation. The Stasi chief, Erich Mielke, thundered: ‘Hungary is betraying socialism.’ Prime Minister Stoph was still unwell but rose from his sickbed to fume that Hungary was playing an active part ‘in a long-term FRG plot of subversion’. When Defence Minister Heinz Kessler suggested that perhaps young people may have some reason to complain about life in East Germany, as they saw real opportunities in the West, others were indignant. Horst Dohlus, the head of the Party organisation, said: ‘How can we allow ourselves to be kicked around? We must guard against being discouraged . . . More and more people are asking, how is socialism going to survive here?’5

  By the time Gyula Horn officially announced on Sunday 10 September that all border controls would be lifted from midnight, scores of buses had been sent by the West German government to ferry the refugees through Austria and into Bavaria, where they were given automatic West German citizenship. On the first day 8,100 people poured across the frontier. Within three days there were more than 18,000.

  On his flight back to Budapest from Castle Gymnich, Németh had been in contemplative mood, wondering whether he had done the right thing. ‘One of my advisers came up to me and said “You know, the importance of this decision will perhaps not be recognised immediately, but within five to ten years it will.” ’ Its significance was felt throughout Eastern and Central Europe within a few weeks.6

  The opposition in East Germany was strengthened. From a few isolated peace groups and Church organisations, kept under permanent surveillance by the Stasi, the numbers of people now emboldened to challenge the regime swelled. ‘We saw the border opening and Hungary’s behaviour as a sign of weakness in the GDR regime - it was a sign of weakness,’ said Dr Matthias Mueller, a post-graduate student at Berlin’s Humboldt University. ‘The government seemed no longer to be entirely in control of events. It was a big psychological change in a lot of people, a key moment.’ Yet the opposition was still polite, orderly and well mannered in an old-fashioned and traditional East German way. New Forum, which over the next few weeks became one of the largest of the opposition groups, was founded on 11 September, the day after the Hungarians allowed the refugees to leave. All it sought, to begin with, in the most moderate language, was ‘dialogue’ with the government. The first thing it did was to make an application in the courts for legal status, as though it was seeking permission to start a revolution. The culture of obedience in the GDR ran deep. The ruling went against them: ‘The goals and purposes of the applicant . . . contradict the constitution of the GDR and represent a platform hostile to the State . . . and [the application is] thus illegal,’ stated the verdict. There were still some prominent members who thought the best tactic was to continue the legal course and mount an appeal. ‘We had to be careful. Our aim was to form an
association,’ said Reinhard Schult, one of New Forum’s founders. ‘We did not want to set up a party, nor could we found one.’ Yet within a few days 150,000 people signed a petition calling for talks with the regime. It was as though the entire country had at last woken up. ‘In no way did we imagine that could possibly happen,’ said Schult at the time. ‘It overwhelmed us a bit. We have no office, no telephones, only our apartments . . . And most of us have to work - put in our eight and three-quarter hours a day at the plant, or the institute.’

  Jan Lässig, a New Forum organiser from Leipzig, said that over the last few years he was used to a few dozen people turning up at meetings - familiar faces belonging to various groups. ‘Now, suddenly, so many people were joining our movement that it was not simple. A thousand people would come to a meeting and they wanted to do something. And we didn’t really have a programme, a concept of what do.’7

  Monday night demonstrations began again at the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig, after a break for August. East Germany’s second city was choking to death from neglect. The regime was allowing it to rot. It had once been a big industrial centre of more than 700,000 people, but around 20 per cent of Leipzig’s population had deserted the city over the last five years. Most had gone to other towns in the GDR, though recently significant numbers had headed to the West. Outside the city centre, scores of abandoned shops were boarded up, houses were derelict and the roads were full of potholes. It resembled an urban wasteland. There was a small and still-beautiful centre, with many impressive buildings circled by a broad inner ring road. This was where the demonstrators lit candles and marched for an hour or so, invariably in silence, beginning at around 6 p.m. They were a solemn sight, calling for peace and disarmament. Occasionally demonstrators would hold placards protesting about the environment.