320 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
Gorbachëv retorted that Ceauşescu had courted a financial linkage
with the West and now, through no fault of the USSR, was suffering
the consequences. While inviting him to mend the old ties with
Moscow, he had no illusions about the chances of success with a leader
of Ceauşescu’s vanity and arrogance.^24
At the Political Consultative Committee, in the heart of East
Berlin, Gorbachëv contended that the Berlin Wall required discussion
among communist leaderships. Honecker took this badly. He regarded
any hint about easing the strict division between the two Germanies
with horror.^25 Apparently Gorbachëv desired agreement on how to
deal with Reagan’s scheduled visit to West Berlin in June 1987. The
White House was aspiring to make a big impact: the West Germans
had told the French as early as March that the President would give a
big speech in front of the Brandenburg Gates and call for the free pas-
sage of people and ideas between the two halves of Europe.^26 Whether
Gorbachëv’s suggestion came from Soviet intelligence or his own
intuition is not known. What is certain is that he was raising a funda-
mental question about Soviet and East German strategic policy.
The Political Consultative Committee took no decision, and
indeed it was unclear what exactly Gorbachëv had it in mind to do.
East Germany was a source of growing concern to the Politburo. As
worries spread, the KGB took soundings about popular opinion
there.^27 Gorbachëv decided to do nothing. Much as he would have
liked the East Germans – and the rest of Eastern Europe – to take up
the model of perestroika, he foresaw trouble if he helped to remove
Honecker. The same considerations troubled Shevardnadze, but he
came to a different conclusion. It would seem that he had been recon-
ciled to German reunification for at least a year; but perhaps he
recognized that his Georgian national sensibility enabled him to see
this more clearly than Gorbachëv and other Russian politicians.^28
On 30 May he brought up the question of the two Germanys in one
of the discussions he held at his ministry. Like Gorbachëv, he wanted
a clear policy on how to deal with the potential fallout from the
American President’s visit to West Germany in the following month.
Shevardnadze asked his officials to help him plan for the future:
‘Reagan can propose the idea of the unification of Germany. Sharp
reaction of our friends [in East Germany] to this idea. Think up long-
term programme of work in this direction.’^29
Reagan’s speechwriter Peter Robinson was drafting a speech
exactly along the lines that Soviet leaders feared. Robinson wanted the