Thatcher told Gorbachev Britain did not want German reunification

[FarCenter]

Two months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Margaret Thatcher told President Gorbachev that neither Britain nor Western Europe wanted the reunification of Germany and made clear that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.

In an extraordinary frank meeting with Mr Gorbachev in Moscow in 1989 — never before fully reported — Mrs Thatcher said the destabilisation of Eastern Europe and the breakdown of the Warsaw Pact were also not in the West’s interests. She noted the huge changes happening across Eastern Europe, but she insisted that the West would not push for its decommunisation. Nor would it do anything to risk the security of the Soviet Union.

Even 20 years later, her remarks are likely to cause uproar. They are all the more explosive as she admitted that what she said was quite different from the West’s public pronouncements and official Nato communiqués. She told Mr Gorbachev that he should pay no attention to these.

“We do not want a united Germany,” she said. “This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”

Her hardline views emerge from a remarkable cache of official Kremlin records smuggled out of Moscow. After Mr Gorbachev left office in 1991, copies of the state archives went to his personal foundation in Moscow. A few years ago Pavel Stroilov, a young writer doing research at the foundation, understood the huge historical significance of what they recorded. He copied more than 1,000 transcripts of all the Politburo discussions and brought them with him when he moved to London to continue his research.

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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6829735.ece

[liberalpragmatist]

1. That's actually not that surprising

When the Wall first came down, many people expected that East Germany would remain a separate state, just democratized, with Berlin internationalized. It become clear in the months that followed that desire for German Reunification was very high.

At the time, many in France and the UK and throughout Western Europe and Eastern Europe were openly skeptical. This was partly because conservative West German politicians were making noises about redrawing Germany's border with Poland, and because there was lingering fear that a reunified Germany would become a militaristic, chauvinistic state again.

[Captain Hilts]

2. Hence the joke, "I like Germany so much, I prefer having two!"

[NWHarkness]

3. Ha! The "Iron Lady"

For 30 years the conservatives have touted her as a courageous opponent to communism. Now we find out that she tried to prop up the tottering USSR.

Is it to much to hope that the other shoe will drop and we'll get a similar revelation about St Ronnie?