CRACKS IN THE ICE: EASTERN EUROPE 73Here you are, for instance, grumbling that we’re taking credits
from the West and sliding into debt. But what can we do about it?
You don’t give them and can’t give them. We produce this rubbish- [he tugged with his fingers on Zagladin’s shirt front] – at a
higher level of quality than you do, and then you sell such shirts
in Moscow for foreign currency in the special ‘Berëzka’ store. So
what are we to expect? And the people ask us: ‘Why can’t we live
as well as or better than West Germans or Austrians or Danes who
travel to our Golden Coast in their tens of thousands?’ And it’s not
millionaires who travel to us but ordinary workers.^42
He was blurting out a truth that usually nobody dared to express: that
no economy in Europe east of the river Elbe, including East Germany,
could meet the demands of its citizens with anything like the effective-
ness of the countries of advanced capitalism.
The USSR had gripes about the East European communist admin-
istrations. For years Bulgaria had received a subsidy from USSR to
improve its agricultural infrastructure. The idea was for the Bulgarians
to use it to supply Soviet stores with fruit and vegetables of high qual-
ity. Bulgaria failed to fulfil its obligation. The deliveries were usually
late and in poor condition – and Sofia still fixed the prices at higher
than the world market rate.^43 The USSR was Bulgaria’s milch cow; and
Zhivkov, by reporting on the heavy effects of Bulgarian indebtedness
to the West, was hoping that the USSR’s leaders would find it desirable
to save him from bankruptcy.^44
Though Poland was communism’s gaping wound in Eastern
Europe, the situation in the other countries had a distinct potential to
turn septic. The diplomat and party official Valentin Falin doubted
that the German Democratic Republic could last much long when
he became Ambassador to West Germany. He had issued an alert as
early as 1971. Andropov was so worried that he withheld Falin’s note
from the Politburo; he told only Brezhnev. Falin persisted in his role
as the Cassandra of Soviet foreign policy. In August 1980 he came
to Andropov again and predicted that tanks would have to be used
within the next five years if Erich Honecker stayed General Secretary.
Andropov did not disagree, except that he thought that the trouble
might happen sooner.^45 For Falin, the best option for the USSR was to
aspire to the highest reward in return for agreeing to German reunifi-
cation.^46 Although nobody thanked him for his frankness, he did not
suffer demotion. The Soviet party leaders appreciated that Falin was