EASTERN EUROPE: PERPLEXITY AND PROTEST 325‘principles of equality and non-interference’. He stressed that the
USSR expected all the socialist countries to ‘define for themselves
the path of their own development’.^52 But when Yakovlev went to Ulan
Bator for a meeting of ‘fraternal parties’ in the same month, the East
Germans denied any need for a ‘renewal’ of socialism.^53 The German
question came up in a different guise a few days later at the gathering
of Warsaw Pact foreign ministers in Bulgaria when Poland’s Marian
Orzechowski expressed concern about West Germany’s perennial
refusal to recognize the European borders imposed in 1945. East
Germany’s Oscar Fischer warned that West Germany’s growing liaison
with France presented the danger that Bonn would gain access to
nuclear weaponry.^54
The East European leaders answered the call to reduce the conven-
tional forces of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It anyway mattered little
to Shevardnadze if the Political Consultative gave trouble: ‘It won’t be
a tragedy if one or other socialist country doesn’t vote for us on some
question.’^55 He and Gorbachëv contemplated the withdrawal of Soviet
forces from Eastern Europe. They had no notion about whether it
would be of a partial or total kind. Foreign Affairs Ministry officials
warned that the process would take time and that the social con-
sequences required close attention. They foresaw difficulty in resettling
so large a contingent of troops in the USSR. This did not discourage
Shevardnadze, who reasoned that Soviet leaders had no choice: if
they failed to take the initiative by removing the troops, the peoples
of the region would sooner or later turn upon them. He spoke about
the terrible consequences of using force to resolve political crises –
he mentioned the enduring anger among Georgians about the Tbilisi
protest demonstrations of 1956. World history was strewn with
pre cedents of mass resentment leading to all-out revolt. Pre-emptive
measures were preferable. The military pull-out that he proposed
would be entirely voluntary. No foreign power, not even America or
China, would be responsible for bringing this about; and ‘anti-Soviet-
ism’ would be drastically reduced around the world.^56
Soviet spokesmen denied that a change in policy was at hand, but
the Hungarians leaked the information to the Americans. The CIA
kept the process under review. If Moscow did any such thing, the
debate would be intense throughout NATO. The USSR would appear
to some of America’s allies as an entirely peaceful superpower. This
could complicate American efforts to hold NATO to the agreed objec-
tive of military modernization.^57