‘Europe is our Common Home’: A study of Gorbachev's diplomatic concept

Abstract

First introduced as an image for propaganda, the concept of a ‘Common European Home’ became in 1986 part of Gorbachevian New Thinking and eventually came to represent a new diplomatic architecture for Europe. Beyond this diplomatic dimension, it also involved the Utopia of a new European civilization, which triggered a vivid debate in Russian society, inducing elites and opinion to reflect on their identity. On the diplomatic scene however, except for the 1987 and 1990 agreements, it brought no concrete accomplishments – Mitterrand's project of confederation failed-illustrating the difficulty for West and Central Europeans in sharing a vision of a common future.

This article was prepared while the author was a visiting fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in spring 2002. She wishes to express her sincere appreciation to the Director and the staff of the Institute for their support and kind hospitality.

Notes

1. Among the latter, see Marian Leighton, ‘Toward a “Common European Home”, What's in it for Us?’, Global Affairs 6/2 (1991), pp.77–92; Georges-Henri Soutou, ‘La Maison Commune Européenne: tactique et stratégie’, Géopolitique 36 (1991–92), pp.73–80; and Jacques Levesque, ‘De la “Maison Commune Européenne” à la désintégration du Pacte de Varsovie et à celle de l'URSS’, Etudes Internationales 23/1 (1992), pp.37–55.

2. In his book, The Gorbachev Factor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Archie Brown does not even mention the concept. And in his study of Gorbachev, Gorbachev and After (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Stephen White mentions the expression only in passing (p.195).

3. See, for example, Coit D. Blacker, Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy, 1985–1991 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993); James Goldgeier, Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy: Stalin, Khruschev, Brezhnev and Gorbachev (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.) Erik Hoffmann, Robin Laird and Frederic Fleron, Contemporary Issues in Soviet Foreign Policy from Brezhnev to Gorbachev (New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1991); Nicolai N. Petro and Alvin Z. Rubinstein, Russian Foreign Policy, From Empire to Nation-State (New York: Longman, 1997); and Gerhard Wettig, Soviet Foreign Policy under Gorbachev: New Political Thinking and its Impact (London: Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, 1988)

4. He was born in 1931 in Stavropol (Caucasus) in an agricultural area between the Black and the Caspian Seas.

5. With a degree in law.

6. He was at that time the first secretary of the Stavropol regional party committee.

7. He was called to Moscow in 1978 and became a member of the CPSU Secretariat, in charge of agriculture; two years later, he was already a voting member of the Politburo.

8. Mikhail Gorbachev, On My Country and the World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), p.177.

9. In Russian, ‘Evropa, nash obshchii dom’, Pravda, 19 Dec. 1984.

10. Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (London: Doubleday, 1996), p.161.

11. See Marie-Pierre Rey, ‘Georges Pompidou et l'Union soviétique’, in Georges Pompidou et l'Europe (Paris: Complexe, 1995), pp.141–70.

12. Pravda, 24 Dec. 1981; see also Hannes Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Foreign Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1998), p.47.

13. Gorbachev, On My Country and the World, p.171.

14. Gorbachev, Memoirs, p.428.

15. Ibid., pp.428–9.

16. Andrei Grachev shares this point of view. In the interview given to me in March 2002, he stated that in 1985, there was no concept and no precise political project beyond the image.

17. Izvestiya, 25 Sept. 1985. Quoted in Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch, p.251.

18. However, as we will see later, in offering this separate negotiation on nuclear weapons and in offering to dissociate the question of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe from other strategic issues, Gorbachev would arouse mistrust and apprehension in Western Europe.

19. See Harry Gelman, The Brezhnev Politburo and the Decline of Détente (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986).

20. ‘I had arrived at the sad conclusion that this step, fateful both for our country and Europe and for the rest of the world, had been taken without the necessary political and strategic analysis of its possible consequences. … It was not merely a question of replacing “obsolete” equipment. Technological progress allowed the creation of SS-20 missiles far superior to their predecessors in terms or range, precision, guidance and all other properties. Essentially they had the characteristics of strategic weapons. … The Soviet leadership failed to take into account the probable reaction of the Western countries. I would even go so far as to characterize it as an unforgivable adventure, embarked on by the previous leadership under pressure from the military-industrial complex. They might have assumed that, while we deployed our missiles, Western counter-measures would be impeded by the peace movement. If so, such a calculation was more than naive. … the counter-measures adopted by NATO resulted in a serious threat to Soviet security - the most populated part of the USSR suddenly finding itself within reach of the Pershing II. Since the American missiles would take a maximum of five minutes to reach their targets, we were practically unprotected against a possible strike.’ In Gorbachev, Memoirs, pp.443–4.

21. Coit D. Blacker, Hostage to Revolution: Gorbachev and Soviet Security Policy (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993), p.98.

22. In exchange for this, the United Kingdom and France had to agree not to augment their nuclear forces.

23. Blacker, Hostage to Revolution, p.102.

24. ‘The realistic dialectic of present-day development consists in a combination of competition and confrontation between the two systems and in a growing tendency towards the interdependence of the countries of the world community.’ FBIS/Soviet Union: Party Congresses, 26 Feb. 1986. Cited by Petro and Rubinstein, Russian Foreign Policy, p.149.

25. The expression would also be used by Shevarnadze in his paper published in Pravda, 28 Sept. 1988.

26. Quoted by Richard Sakwa, Gorbachev and His Reforms, 1985–1990 (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1990), p.334.

27. Gorbachev declared in his report that ‘the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems is not simply the absence of war. It is an international order under which good-neighbourliness and cooperation, not military power, would dominate, and broad exchanges of scientific and technical achievements and cultural values to benefit all peoples would take place’. Quoted in Petro and Rubinstein, Russian Foreign Policy, p.300.

28. In Russian, ‘razumnaya dostatochnost’.

29. As shown by the later decisions to leave Afghanistan and to abandon those Third World states that had been Soviet ‘clients’.

30. In February 1987, at the international peace forum in Moscow, Gorbachev emphasized that ‘our international policy is determined more than ever before by our domestic policy, by our interest in concentrating on creative work for the perfection of our country. For that reason we need a more stable peace, predictability, and a constructive direction of international relations’. Izvestyia, 17 Feb. 1987.

31. This new search for rationality must be emphasised. Beria in 1953 had failed to convince his Politburo colleagues on this matter. Supported by Shevarnadze, Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to ask for a precise evaluation of the cost and benefits of foreign policy.

32. See in particular Anatoly Adamishin's testimony (in an interview given on 5 Aug. 1999), as well as that of Valentin Aleksandrov on 12 Nov. 1998. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika, Hoover Institution, Gorbachev Foundation.

33. On the mezhdunarodniki, see Nicolas Polianski's memoirs in MID, douze ans dans les services diplomatiques du Kremlin (Paris: Belfond, 1988).

34. See for example the case of Yuri Dubinin who was born in 1930, graduated from the MGIMO in 1955, and became the Soviet ambassador to Spain (in October 1978) then to the US (in June 1986) before being sent to Paris in February 1990.

35. On the generational question and the impact of MGIMO on the formation of the mezhdunarodniki, see my article ‘Soviet Diplomacy and Diplomats during the Khrushchev Era’, Paris, December 2001 (in press).

36. See Neil Malcom, ‘New Thinking and After: Debate in Moscow about Europe’, in Neil Malcom (ed.), Russia and Europe: An End to Confrontation? (London: Pinter, 1994), p.153. The author writes about the mezhdunarodniki: ‘While much of their work represented routine elaboration of official doctrine, the more independent-minded among them were able to smuggle in new ideas from the West behind the obligatory ideological smokescreen. During the thirty years before 1985 the traditional image of a hostile and crumbling West, from which the Soviet Union could and should remain aloof, had been gradually eroded.’

37. The most prestigious Institute for International Relations is at the Academy of Sciences; IMEMO stands for the Institute of World Economy and International Relations.

38. Anatoly Chernyaev's interview, 24 May 2001, in Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

39. ‘The ideas of the new thinking were not fixed for all time. They constantly evolved.’ Cited in Gorbachev, On My Country and the World, p.187.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid.

42. For an analysis of the Belgrade speech, see Archives of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AFMFA), Europe 1986–90, USSR, box 6648, Madrid to Quai, 17 Jan. 1989.

43. ‘The USSR is now convinced that in the present context it is impossible to separate the United States and Canada from the destiny of Europe. Gorbachev progressively recognized this point, in a pragmatic and realistic way … he now admits that the United States and Canada must take part in the project, which appears as a development of the Helsinki process.’ Ibid.

44. In 1986 Spain and Portugal joined the European Community and the Single European Act was adopted.

45. AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, USSR, box 6648, Madrid to Quai, 17 Jan. 1989.

46. See Jacques Levesque, ‘Soviet Approaches to Eastern Europe at the Beginning of 1989’, CWIHP Bulletin 12/13 (2001), p.49.

47. On his hope to see socialism with a human face in Eastern Europe as in the USSR, see Chernyaev's testimony, 24 May 2001, in the collection of oral archives on Perestroika. Chernyaev emphasizes: ‘Gorbachev thought that bringing freedom to our Eastern satellites would lead them to adopt a socialism with a human face. He made an enormous mistake because these countries brutally turned their back on us.’

48. See his address: ‘It is evident, for example, that force and the threat of force can no longer be, and should not be instruments of foreign policy. Freedom of choice is a universal principle to which there should not be exceptions.’ Cited in CWIHP Bulletin 12/13 (2001), p.29.

49. V. Lukin in Moskovskie Novosti 38 (1988), quoted in Malcom (ed.), Russia and Europe: An End to Confrontation? p.14.

50. Interview given by Anatoly Adamishin, 5 Aug. 1999. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

51. Ibid.

52. Interview given by Anatoly Chernyaev, 24 May 2001. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

53. The expression ‘free-riding’ (‘parasitage’) is used by Georges-Henri Soutou in La guerre de cinquante ans (Paris: Fayard, 2001), p.689. To my mind, this affirmation is no longer relevant after 1988 and it constitutes a misinterpretation of Gorbachev's motivations and objectives.

54. Talk between President Bush and Gorbachev, 3 Dec. 1989. Quoted in CWIHP Bulletin 12/13 (2001), pp.238–40

55. Gorbachev, Memoirs, pp.401–2.

56. Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, p.108.

57. And worse for Gorbachev, several members of the Politburo, such as Yegor Ligachev, chief of the party cadres' department, would soon become strong opponents of some of his foreign policy decisions.

58. Gorbachev, in Memoirs, p.405: ‘Obviously, it was Politburo's and the General Secretary's prerogative to set the basic course on questions of principle and decide the positions which would correspond both to Soviet interests and to the realities of world politics.’

59. On all these changes, see AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, USSR, box 6677, Note 666/EU, Sous-Direction d'Europe orientale, 23 June 1986. See also Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, pp.104–11.

60. Chernyaev's testimony, 24 May 2001. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika. There is a similar assertion in his memoirs, My Six Years with Gorbachev (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p.176

61. See Petro and Rubinstein, Russian Foreign Policy, p.96.

62. Ibid., p.97.

63. See Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, p.217.

64. On these changes in the MID, see AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, USSR, box 6677, Note 666/EU, Sous-Direction de l'Europe orientale, 23 June 1986

65. Adamishin states that on different occasions, the ‘new’ MID supported by Shevarnadze had to go backwards and submit to the CC Secretariat where Yegor Ligachev was playing a key role. See his testimony in the collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

66. Anatoly Kovalev's testimony. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

67. Georgy Kornienko's testimony. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

68. Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch, p.303.

69. Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, pp.243–4.

70. See, for example, Valentin Falin's testimony, 27 Sept. 1999. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

71. See Anatoly Adamishin's testimony. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

72. Interview given by Valentin Aleksandrov, 12 Nov. 1998. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

73. Interview given by Vladimir Kryuchkov. Collection of oral archives on Perestroika.

74. Commonly referred to as the Bogomolov Institute.

75. Quoted by Marie Mendras, in ‘URSS: le procès inachevé d'une politique étrangère’, Politique étrangère 4 (1988), p.799. Some extracts of the article are also reported in AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, USSR, box 6648, Moscow to Quai, 2458, 15 June 1988.

76. Quoted by Mendras, ‘URSS: le procès inachevé d'une politique étrangère’, p.880.

77. ‘We have to think and judge from the class struggle principle in international relations. Any other way of thinking is confusing for the Soviet people and for our friends abroad’, ibid., p.881.

78. Pravda, 13 Aug. 1988.

79. Pravda, 29 Aug. 1988.

80. Pravda, 20 Aug. 1988.

81. See Malcom, Russia and Europe: An End to Confrontation? p.158.

82. Vera Tolz, Inventing the Nation, Russia (London: Arnold, 2001), p.123.

83. Ibid.

84. Shevarnadze interviewed by Fedor Burlatsky, Literaturnaya Gazeta, 10 April 1991. Quoted by Malcom, Russia and Europe: An End to Confrontation? p.160.

85. Ibid., p.163.

86. See Tolz, Inventing the Nation.

87. ‘Narodnost’ in Russian.

88. See my last book, Marie-Pierre Rey, Le dilemme russe, la Russie et l'Europe occidentale d'Ivan le Terrible à Boris Eltsine (Paris: Flammarion, 2002).

89. Brown, The Gorbachev Factor, p.77.

90. Archives de la Presidence de la Republique (APRF), fonds des collaborateurs, fonds URSS, correspondance Etats-Unis, Mitterrand to Reagan, 12 Oct. 1985,

91. Mitterrand to Thatcher, 31 July 1986. Quoted by Hubert Védrine in Les mondes de François Mitterrand, A l'Elysée, 1981–1985 (Paris: Fayard, 1996), p.383.

92. APRF, fonds URSS, correspondance Grande-Bretagne, fonds des collaborateurs, Thatcher to Mitterrand, 21 Aug. 1986.

93. This declaration was published in Newsweek, 27 Oct. 1986. On its impact on Soviet government, see Adomeit, The Imperial Overstretch, p.259.

94. APRF, fonds des collaborateurs, Chambord meeting between Kohl and Mitterrand, 28 March 1987.

95. Adomeit, The Imperial Overstretch, p.246.

96. Pravda, 23 July 1986. Also quoted in Adomeit, The Imperial Overstretch, p.247.

97. ‘Gorbachev is first looking for an understanding with the United States. But he wants also to show them that he is able to conduct another policy if they show themselves too hard. This other policy is looking at Europe and especially at France. The important thing to notice is that Gorbachev is now playing his European card. and the French one - to reach the United States.’ APRF, fonds des collaborateurs, meeting between Mitterrand and Genscher, 18 July 1986.

98. On this sensitive question, see AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, sous-direction d'Europe orientale, USSR, note 496 EU, 14 May 1986 which declares: ‘Its long term goals remain to reduce European defence capacities by decoupling and to denuclearize the Old Continent.’

99. See Adomeit, Imperial Overstretch, p.245.

100. APRF, URSS, fonds des collaborateurs, meeting between Gorbachev and Mitterrand, 2 Oct. 1985.

101. Gorbachev used this expression during his meeting with Mitterrand, 2 Oct. 1985.

102. See APRF, URSS, fonds des collaborateurs, meeting between Mitterrand and Gorbachev, 4 Oct. 1985.

103. See Blacker, Hostage to Revolution, p.109.

104. Chirac's May 1987 Moscow trip confirmed these Franco-Soviet tensions, which also interfered with Franco-French quarrels. See APFR, URSS, fonds des collaborateurs, Mitterrand's statement to Ryabov, 19 Dec. 1986: ‘You must know that the prospective of the zero option does not disturb me. My point of view therefore differs from that of many politicians in Europe who clearly prefer a US INF presence in Europe. This is a paradox: defiance vis-à-vis Reagan after Reykjavik came from the West Europeans. As far as I am concerned, I did approve the section in NATO's final communiqué dealing with the zero option on INF … And so again I approved in the communiqué the fifty percent reduction [in strategic weapons], the zero option [on INF], negotiations on short-range weapons, and negotiations on conventional weapons.’

105. See, for example, APRF, URSS, fonds des collaborateurs, Thatcher to Mitterrand, 3 April 1987. When coming back from Moscow, Thatcher specified that she had had the opportunity freely to invite Andrei Sakharov to lunch at the British embassy and to meet some ‘refuzhniki’. She declared to Gorbachev that if she favourably accepted the measures already taken by the Soviet power on this question, she nevertheless expressed the hope of seeing more dissidents released and more Jewish people allowed to leave the country.

106. See, for example, AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, URSS, box 6678, Quai note, 21 April 1987. Also AFMA, 13393, box 6675, Chirac to Thatcher, 26 May 1987. On the human rights question, he declares that in Moscow he met some dissidents and that their conversation reminded him that the recent and positive measures were revocable at any time.

107. AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, USSR, box 6780, telegram from Moscow 5619, meeting between Mitterrand and Gorbachev, 25 Nov. 1988.

108. Ibid.

109. Y. Bovkun, Y. Grishin and S. Guk in Izvestiya, 13 June 1989, quoted by David H. Shumaker, Gorbachev and the German Question, Soviet-West German relations, 1985–1990 (Westport: Praeger, 1995), p.95.

110. See AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, USSR, box 6648, note 690/EU, 7 March 1988.

111. See La Croix, 26 Oct. 1989.

112. He wrote: ‘The “common European home” is an attractive concept, but in reality it must accommodate countries with different characters, economic and political systems and allegiances. Our task, within the EC, is to ensure that the Soviet message does not dilute our progress. … Gorbachev should also acknowledge that the system over which he presides has no temptations for West Europeans. He must give some hope that there is a formal route for restive East Europeans, but recognize that even membership in the Council of Europe implies human rights, social and environmental improvements. If he does, we should all welcome his design for the common European home, because it will be built to our specifications.’

113. See Shumaker, Gorbachev and the German Question, p.96: ‘Kohl later recalled a private meeting with Gorbachev in the FRG [in June 1989] in which Kohl assured his guest that unification was inevitable. It might be delayed, but could not be permanently prevented. According to Kohl, Gorbachev only listened quietly. Instead of responding directly to Kohl's remarks, Gorbachev asked whether he could count on West German economic assistance if he needed. This exchange, which Kohl later labelled “the decisive moment” in the process of German unification, captured an essential aspect of the unfolding Soviet-West German relationship.’

114. Quoted by Shumaker, Gorbachev and the German Question, p.96.

115. See Védrine, Les mondes de François Mitterrand, p.442. He declares that Gorbachev told Mitterrand: ‘Help me to prevent the German unification.’ But there is no official record of this Kiev declaration in the French Archives I could see nor does it appear in the Soviet transcript of the meeting quoted by Adomeit in The Imperial Overstretch, pp.459–60.

116. Soviet transcript of the meeting between Mitterrand and Gorbachev, Kiev, 6 Dec. 1989. Quoted in Adomeit, The Imperial Overstretch, pp.459–60.

117. The French President stated: ‘It is necessary to make sure that the all-European process develops more rapidly than the German question and that it overtakes the German movement. We have to create all-European structures. The German component must only be one, and by no means the dominant or leading element of politics in Europe.’ Quoted in Adomeit, The Imperial Overstretch, p.460.

118. See Védrine, Les mondes de François Mitterrand, p.442.

119. Press conference in La Documentation française.

120. Meeting between Mitterrand and Gorbachev, 25 May 1990 in Andrei Grachev's personal archives. I am deeply grateful to Grachev who gave me a Russian copy of the report.

121. In the interview he gave me in March 2002.

122. And not ‘on the Helsinki agreements’, an expression that would have been more static.

123. Mitterrand's New Year Declaration, 31 Dec. 1989. La Documentation française.

124. His private residence in the south-west of France.

125. See for example, AFMFA, Europe 1986–90, URSS, box 6649, Moscow to Quai, 72, 8 Jan. 1990.

126. During their meeting at Latche, 4 Jan. 1990. See Le Monde, 5 Jan. 1990.

127. During their meeting in Paris, 15 Feb. 1990. Minutes in APRF, fonds des collaborateurs, URSS.

128. See for example Stuttgarter Zeitung, 5 Jan. 1990.

129. See the text of the treaty signed on 29 Oct. 1990 in AFMFA, Europe 1986–1990, USSR, box 6670.

130. As shown by the Memorandum sent to all the European capitals by the Quai d'Orsay. Le Monde, 13 June 1991.

131. Védrine, Les Mondes de François Mitterrand, p.448.

132. See Rey, Le Dilemme russe.