410 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
faced disturbances. They took place under the severe eyes of the Secu-
ritate in northern Romania and involved the national and religious
grievances of the Hungarian minority there.
As old problems resurfaced, the Soviet leadership sensed that it
could play a role as mediator. There was friction between the Poles and
the East Germans as Jaruzelski sought guarantees about post-war
Poland’s western frontier. Romania had acquired territory from Hun-
gary in 1919, and this was giving rise to tension between Budapest and
Bucharest. Several countries in Eastern Europe, moreover, prevented
travel across their borders. Economic links in the region were on the
decline.^59 On 26 October Shevardnadze spoke to the Warsaw Pact’s
Foreign Ministers in the Polish capital. He said nothing about the
growth of the anticommunist resistance in the region. The priority
in his judgement was to strengthen international security, and he
reported that the Americans understood Soviet official thinking. He
saw the Warsaw Pact with this in mind; he recounted his recent con-
versations with Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Foreign
Affairs Minister Krzysztof Skubiszewski as if it was the most normal
thing in the world for a Soviet leader to parley with Polish Catholic
liberals and conservatives who had prised power from the grasp of
Poland’s communists.^60
Western public figures gave reassuring signals about the German
Democratic Republic. Ex-Chancellor Willi Brandt told Gorbachëv
that the question of German reunification was not at the top of his
agenda.^61 Zbigniew Brzezinski arrived from America for talks with
Yakovlev. Born Polish, Brzezinski feared the consequence of a reuni-
fied Germany. He worried about German revanchism, and for this
reason he counselled the Soviet leadership to hold the Warsaw Pact
together – as political rather than a military alliance.^62
On 1 November Gorbachëv and Krenz spoke by phone about the
current troubles. Both tried to put a brave face on a situation that was
running out of control. Street demonstrations took place in East
German cities. Dissenters sensed that they had the administration on
the run, but Gorbachëv assured Krenz:
You need to know that all serious politicians – Thatcher, Mitter-
rand, Andreotti, not to mention Jaruzelski and the Americans – might
now be showing different nuances in their position but they have a
guarded attitude to the idea of Germany’s unification . . . All these
politicians start from the premise of preserving the post-war
realities, including the existence of two German states.^63