Die Deutschen und Gorbatschow

Hermann Wentker is one of Germany's best-known experts on the history of the Cold War. His latest book, running nearly 700 pages, looks at the transformation of Soviet policy toward Germany under Mikhail Gorbachev. He has thoroughly examined all the relevant archives in Germany and analyzed them in detail.Wentker divides his book into six chronological sections, analyzing Gorbachev's time in office year by year. This approach makes sense, though it results in some repetition. First Wentker analyzes the West and East German assessments of Gorbachev after he took office, with 1986 marked by Chernobyl and the summit in Reykjavik, 1987 by nuclear arms control, 1988 by the advancing Soviet reform policy, 1989 by the peaceful revolutions in East-Central Europe (except Romania) and the opening of the Berlin Wall, and 1990 by German reunification.In each section, Wentker analyzes the West and East German reactions in great detail, sometimes excessively. He shows that in West Germany after Gorbachev took office, most people initially believed the new Soviet leader was “not a liberal” (p. 55). A few journalists in West Germany saw Gorbachev as a reformer early on, but otherwise skepticism prevailed in 1985 and into 1986. Wentker maintains that even at the highest levels of East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) “not much was known about [Gorbachev] at first” (p. 56). SED General Secretary Eric Honecker initially welcomed Gorbachev's rise, believing he would strengthen the Soviet bloc. For a long time, the prevailing view in West German conservative circles (and in some other Western countries) was that Gorbachev's arms control and disarmament initiatives stemmed from “propagandistic and tactical impulses” (p. 161).Wentker repeatedly emphasizes that Gorbachev proved to be a revolutionary leader not only because of his politics but “also because of his personal charisma” (p. 163). By 1987, the initial skepticism in West Germany had given way to distinct optimism. Now, even among previous skeptics, “doubts about Gorbachev's political reform intentions had evaporated,” and in Communist-ruled East Germany the Soviet leader became a symbol of hope for young people who wanted to live in a democratic society (p. 267).Honecker and other SED leaders increasingly viewed events in the USSR with dismay and sought to distance themselves from the Soviet reform course. This initially culminated in the “Sputnik crisis,” a previously unthinkable event, when the SED banned the circulation in East Germany of a reformist Soviet magazine, Sputnik. The book gives the bulk of its attention to the first few years of the Gorbachev era and devotes less coverage to the epochal years of 1989 and 1990, including the opening of the Berlin Wall and the process of German reunification, which have been described in exhaustive detail elsewhere, including by Wentker himself. Throughout the book, Wentker highlights the challenges Gorbachev had to face in Moscow, especially in dealing with issues that led to German reunification (pp. 557–570).Wentker's book is comprehensive and authoritative. The only criticism one could make is that he includes far too many details, some of which would have been better discussed in separate academic essays. Also, on a factual point, Wentker should fix what he says about Gorbachev's role in the suppression of the protests in Tbilisi in April 1989 and later in Vilnius on “Bloody Sunday” in January 1991. Wentker refers only to the press analyses of the time (“whether the Soviet president himself had given the order for the use of force or had lost control,” p. 577) and has not looked at the latest archival research—presented by Mark Kramer, “The Collapse of East European Communism and the Repercussions within the Soviet Union (Part 2),” Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Fall 2004), pp. 3–64, esp. 27–32, and Mark Kramer, “Official Responses to Ethnic Unrest in the USSR, 1985–1991,” Russian History, Vol. 49, No. 2-4 (April 2023), 289-335, based in part on crucial documents subsequently published in Stefan Karner, Mark Kramer, and Peter Ruggenthaler, eds., Der Kreml und die deutsche Wiedervereinigung 1990: Interne sowjetische Analysen (Berlin: Metropol, 2015), pp. 26, 320–332—showing that Gorbachev was not behind the crackdown in Tbilisi in 1989 but did give authorization two years later for the repression in Vilnius and Riga.These issues aside, Wentker's first-rate book deserves to find a much wider audience through an English translation. An abridged edition in English translation would undoubtedly become a standard textbook in classes dealing with German history, the events of 1989, and German-Soviet relations

Political science · German History and Society · German legal, social, and political studies · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · Philosophy