Kristina Spohr - Post Wall, Post Square

The playwright becomes president: Václav Havel and the Velvet Revolution in Prague

Although this was for the moment a transitional government – free elections would not be held until June 1990 – the transformation was truly profound. This had been a ‘Velvet Revolution’: smooth and swift, on occasion even merry. By comparison with Poland, Hungary and GDR, opposition politics in Prague had been improvised by amateurs – but they had been able to learn from the mistakes of the others, as well as from their successes. And what’s more, revolution in Czechoslovakia came without the pain of deepening economic crisis, with which the new governments in Warsaw and Budapest had to grapple. And so by the New Year, Czechoslovakia found itself firmly on the road towards political democracy and a market economy.[167]

So much had changed in only two months. At the start of November 1989, it was still possible in Eastern Europe to imagine a future for communism, albeit in a reformed state. But within weeks no one could doubt that it was in irreversible decline. And by the end of the year ‘those who had come too late’, as Gorbachev put it in East Berlin, had most certainly been punished (Ceaușescu, Zhivkov and Honecker), while those who had never let themselves be silenced (notably Havel and Mazowiecki) had now replaced the leaders they previously denounced.

The fact that Gorbachev presided over these variegated national exits from communism without intervening also allowed Kohl more leeway and gave hope for his mission in 1990: to bring the two Germanies closer to unity. The chancellor set the tone in his New Year message, expressing the aspiration that the coming decade would be ‘the happiest of this century’ for his people – offering ‘the chance of a free and united Germany in a free and united Europe’. That, he said, ‘depended critically on our contribution’. In other words, he was reminding his fellow Germans – so long weighed down by the burden of the past – that they had now been given the opportunity to shape the future.[168]

But the new architecture could not be constructed by Germans alone. With the communist glacier in retreat – indeed melting before one’s eyes – and the ascendant Western Europe opening out, the stark, two-bloc structure of Cold War Europe had cracked asunder. The pieces would now have to be put together in a new mosaic and this would require not merely the consent but also the creative engagement of the superpowers.

In other words, Kohl might have had his problems with Mitterrand and especially Thatcher, but they were mere stumbling blocks. When it came to building a new order around a unifying Germany, this could be achieved only by working with Bush and Gorbachev. Yet both these leaders were deeply preoccupied in late 1989 with their own problems: how belatedly, to create an effective personal rapport after their slow, at times frosty, start. And, more than that, how to manage the delicate business of moving beyond the Cold War in the heart of Europe.

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