EASTERN EUROPE: PERPLEXITY AND PROTEST 317was a double irritation. He had racked up an unpayable debt to
West German banks; at the same time he refused to contemplate the
slightest reform to communism in his country. The Soviet leaders had
for years thought he was taking an exceptional risk with his budget
through his secret dealings with Bonn. This, of course, was exactly
why Kohl liked him: nothing pleased him more than to deal with a
beholden, cooperative East German leader. By 1986 Kohl could cele-
brate the fact that three million East Germans had received visas for
trips to West Germany – five years earlier the figure had barely reached
400,000. He recognized that the very success of his policy might worry
his friends in Western Europe, and he offered a promise to the French
that he would do nothing that might harm their interests. His priority
was to seize the opportunities that were opening in the East. He
wished to exert influence over Poland and Hungary as well as East
Germany. As for Romania, Kohl expected to go on paying annually for
5,000 ethnic Germans to join West Germany at a cost of DM25,000
each; he knew that Ceauşescu was never going to sanction political
and economic reform.^10
In January 1987 a Warsaw Pact meeting of Central Committee
secretaries took place in the Polish capital. Yakovlev, Dobrynin and
Medvedev represented the USSR and had to listen to a chorus of dis-
quiet. The East German leaders reported that the Soviet perestroika
was causing ‘political discomfitures’ to communist administrations.^11
Honecker accused the USSR of a Yugoslav-style break with Marxist-
Leninism. He called the latest play about Lenin by Mikhail Shatrov a
betrayal of the October Revolution; he objected to Andrei Sakharov’s
release from administrative exile in Gorki.^12 When Gorbachëv learned
about the proceedings, he lost his temper. He had never respected
Honecker, whom he likened to the fictional Soviet con-man Ostap
Bender,^13 and regarded Honecker’s outburst in Warsaw as insufferable.
If he continued to cause trouble, Gorbachëv told the Politburo,
Moscow could apply the ultimate sanction of stopping his supplies of
gas and oil or insisting on payment in hard currency. Both measures
would be disastrous for East Germany. What held Gorbachëv back was
the knowledge that such a policy would hardly benefit the USSR. He
insisted that it was ‘necessary to remain friends’ with all the sceptical
leaders in Eastern Europe. He knew that Honecker was not the only
East European leader to have doubts about perestroika. Husák agreed
with Honecker that it was unwise to regard the Soviet reform process