XXIII. Meeting of the PCC, Bucharest, 7-8 July 1989
Editorial Note
As remembered by East German defense minister Heinz Kessler, this PCC meeting was "different from [those] before, impenetrably, frighteningly different..., something schizophrenic, something of an assembly of ghosts."[1] Despite the appearance of business as usual, there was anxious discussion in the corridors, concerned more with the progressing internal disintegration of the Warsaw Pact than with the military balance in Europe.
Honecker set the tone by his observation that "in view of the international affairs as they are, we cannot speak of any basic turn for the better." He deplored what he described as devious Western methods aimed at destabilization of the communist bloc, such as the overcoming of Europe's division on the basis of Western values and the Western "human rights demagogy," which he saw as leading to the alteration of the political and eventually territorial status quo. He did not consider the resistance that was being waged against these methods sufficient.
Expressing agreement with Thatcher's and Bush's view that the Cold War was over, Gorbachev suggested that the future development "will depend on us." He conceded that the forthcoming reductions of armaments would make it difficult for the Warsaw Pact to adjust to the new situation and that the recent attempts to improve and "democratize" the workings of the alliance proved unsuccessful because of the "novelty and complexity" of this task. In fact, Romania no longer pursued its 1988 proposal for the Warsaw Pact's reorganization nor had the Bulgarian counterproposal been seriously considered by the allies.
The meeting revealed growing disagreement among the alliance's members about the domestic effects of the recent East-West rapprochement. The Soviet Union, East Germany, and Romania urged stronger promotion of "socialist" values, but the Soviet Union insisted on respecting at the same time the "international standards" regardless of what domestic impact this might have. East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria were most adamant in favoring unified action against Western interference.
In contrast, Hungary, having already gone the farthest in gradually detaching itself from the Warsaw Pact, criticized the notion of a "socialist monolith," urging instead the development of mutual relations on the basis of international law and the principles of the CSCE. Also Gen. Jaruzelski, by then member of a Polish government that was no longer controlled by the communists, recommended excluding references to the obligatory "socialist development" from the conference documents.
The Warsaw Pact's new supreme commander Gen. P.G. Lushev warned that the implementation of the pending proposals for the reduction of armaments would result in the overall superiority of NATO and the "destruction of the present structure of the Unified Armed Forces." In a television interview after the PCC meeting, Gorbachev acknowledged this much by predicting that "life changes and no doubt that organization will change too ... probably this alliance will be transformed first of all from a military and political one to a political and military one... The time when there is need for this will pass."[2]
Vojtech Mastny
Notes
[1] Heinz Kessler, Zur Sache und zur Person: Erinnerungen (Berlin: Edition Ost, 1996), pp. 244-45.
[2] Quoted in Vladimir Kusin, "Gorbachev's Evolving Attitude towards Eastern Europe," RL Report on the USSR, 4 August 1989, p. 9.