REVOLUTION IN EASTERN EUROPE 403Political Consultative Committee of the Warsaw Pact in Bucharest. It
was an astonishing occasion. The Romanian capital was a bastion of
reactionary communism. Its leadership was being constrained to give
a respectful welcome to the arch-reformer Gorbachëv. Ceauşescu’s
annoyance was balanced by a sense of relief that he was not having to
deal with anything like the situation that faced Jaruzelski. The Polish
leader was the first communist leader since the late 1940s to undergo
the indignity of electoral defeat. Communists were notorious for fixing
such processes by whatever means were necessary. Jaruzelski created a
precedent.
There was to be no doubt, as Gorbachëv saw it, that the Warsaw
Pact had to demonstrate its acceptance of Poland’s popular verdict.
He took pleasure in the recent statements by Bush and Thatcher to the
effect that the Cold War was over. A new international order was in
the making, and Gorbachëv wanted the alliance to enhance the pro-
cess.^11 He noted that Western leaders thought they had achieved a
triumph over socialism as they noted the growing technological gap
with the West as well as the rise in Eastern Europe’s debts. Gorbachëv
intended to stay calm and ignore the display of bourgeois self-satisfac-
tion. He denied that the socialist future was any cause for concern. He
declared that it was better to prove this by their deeds rather than to
bluster about it.^12 He informed his fellow leaders about Soviet plans
to withdraw a large number of troops in line with agreements for
the reduction of conventional forces throughout Europe.^13 He spoke
warmly about the opportunities for scientific and technological co -
operation with France. He and Mitterrand had agreed on this, and
Gorbachëv no longer talked disparagingly about the French Eureka
research programme.^14 (Indeed, he now told Mitterrand of his wish for
the USSR to join programme.)^15 On human rights, he insisted that his
own reforms in the USSR were not a concession to the West but a
‘deep internal necessity’ that was integrally connected with the process
of perestroika.^16
Jaruzelski, as Poland’s President and commander-in-chief, stressed
that as the rapprochement between the superpowers proceeded, his
country needed West Germany to recognize Poland’s western frontier.
The Poles dreaded the rebirth of ideas of a Greater Germany and the
possibility that Kohl would lay claim to the territory that Poland had
gained in 1945.^17
The American administration could hardly believe that a commu-
nist leadership in Eastern Europe had peacefully accepted rejection in