Of course the arms race and its fuck ups imploding the USSR is very interesting but the east Germany handling anecdotes are particularly insane and geniounely infuriating. Fucking MITTERRAND was calling up Gorby telling him "the fuck dude you are hanging the gdr and Honecker out dry"

On the eve of the famous negotiations in Arkhyz about the future of Germany, Gorbachev, through his assistant Chernyaev, contacted Helmut Kohl and began to cry: “I have nothing to feed the people, give three or four billion Deutschmarks, and in return you will receive everything you need in Arkhyz.” In this short sentence is the very essence of Gorbachev! He took loans from the West and was ready to pay for them not only with the integrity of the community of socialist countries, but also with the existence of his own country.

In addition to the negotiations between Gorbachev and Kolya in Arkhyz, in December 1989 [a month after the fall of Berlin Wall] the Soviet leader met with French President Mitterrand in Kyiv. Mitterand invited Gorbachev to fly to Berlin together to support Honecker[then already an ex-leader of GDR]. Gorbachev’s reaction: “If you want to fly, fly! And I won’t go." I also remember how Thatcher suggested to Gorbachev not to resolve the issue with Germany exclusively personally, but to create a commission on this matter, which would include England, France and the USSR. Thatcher feared that as a result of the unification in the Gorbachev style, the western part of the country would swallow the eastern part, and instead of a single German nation, an “ossi-wessy” conflict would result. Gorbachev, in my presence, reacted to the proposal of the Iron Lady in this way: “I don’t want to wash their dirty laundry for the British and French, but I will support the unification of Germany.” This is how Moscow surrendered the GDR, and Honecker, and all the East Germans.

I know for sure that at the talks in Arkhyz, Helmut Kohl asked Gorbachev if Moscow intended to somehow help Erich Honecker, the SED and the entire socialist elite of the GDR. Kohl clearly thought that Moscow intended to help its German Genosses. But Gorbachev answered him: “These questions are your internal affair, and you know better how to deal with whom.”

[...final(third) part]

-I found out that Yakovlev was an USA asset back in 1961. I was told about this by a friend of mine, who was then working in the KGB of the USSR. For almost 10 years, Alexander Nikolayevich worked as the USSR ambassador to Canada. He was not an American spy in the usual sense of the word. By the time Gorbachev became general secretary, Yakovlev was one of the most important agents of American influence in the USSR. I will note for the sake of truth, he was a very gifted and intelligent person, two orders of magnitude smarter and more talented than Gorbachev. Yakovlev’s masters across the ocean were also no fools, and had a good idea of ​​​​what was going on in the political elite of the USSR.

The chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, having collected compromising materials on Yakovlev, came with them to Yakovlev’s office. Yakovlev answered all the questions of Vladimir Aleksandrovich with silence, and Kryuchkov then went to report to Gorbachev. Mikhail Sergeevich chewed his lips and came up with a summary of astonishing profundity. Say, who does not have the sins of youth? Yakovlev is a useful person for perestroika, so the country needs him and he needs to be allowed into big politics. And they let him in. Like a goat straight into the garden!

Yakovlev’s ascent began not along the political line, but along the line of foreign economic relations. This began after information about his tricks with the Americans reached Yuri Andropov, and he was returned from Ottawa to Moscow with an order to “keep an eye on him and not let him into the Central Committee of the CPSU.”

In 1982, Nikolai Nikolaevich Inozemtsev, director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO), died. It was decided to put Yakovlev in the chair of the late Inozemtsev. Let him sit at IMEMO, do scientific work, and we will follow him. Andropov died in 1984, and everyone was not up to Yakovlev. When Gorbachev was still in Chernenko’s team, Yakovlev made a very strong impression on him. After all, the director of IMEMO was smart and charming and could suggest a lot of useful ideas and solutions. And Gorbachev was not distinguished by a special mind, but he was very receptive to everything new, even too much.

In the summer of 1985, a few months after Chernenko’s death and his accession to the throne, Gorbachev made Yakovlev Secretary of the Central Committee for Ideology. He allowed an foreign agent straight into the Central Committee, furthermore to the seat of the main ideologist of the country!

In 1989, at the Second Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, Yakovlev made a report on the tragic consequences for Europe as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Thanks to his report, the USSR was imposed a complex of a country that should pay everyone for everything and repent before the whole world, only for the fact of it’s very existence. Shortly after this report, pogroms of Russians began in the Baltic republics, in Moldova and in Western Ukraine. In 1988, blood was already shed in Sumgayit. Some time later, the entire Soviet Transcaucasus plunged into an atmosphere of mutual genocide. Then the North Caucasus…Thank you so much, Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev. Today it is known that on the eve of the collapse of the USSR, he actively traveled to all the union republics and fomented extremist sentiments there. On the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall, he traveled to the GDR and the FRG.

–What was the situation in our country when the question of German unification was being decided? Did Gorbachev rightfully receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990?

–An economic and then a social crisis erupted in the USSR. The country was threatened with famine and a major social explosion. But public opinion was already under control, I would even say under the hood of Western ideology. You remember how during the perestroika period the wind was blowing over empty shelves in our stores, while trains with fish, meat, butter, and vegetables stood near Moscow? But they were never unloaded, and everything that was there rotted into waste. The labor of thousands of Soviet people, by the will of the Soviet leadership, turned into waste. But the leaders at that moment were discussing another issue: the establishment of the post of President of the USSR. I asked Gorbachev a direct question: what will change in our country after the establishment of the presidency? Will there be products in stores? Wouldn’t it be better to attend to issues of food supply, social and youth policy, issues of national outskirts? Gorbachev replied: “I will give instructions on all questions. Food will definitely appear"

But nothing has changed. Some progress with products appeared after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Then I found out that it was not a coincidence! On the eve of the famous negotiations in Arkhyz about the future of Germany, Gorbachev, through his assistant Chernyaev, contacted Helmut Kohl and began to cry: “I have nothing to feed the people, give three or four billion Deutschmarks, and in return you will receive everything you need in Arkhyz.” In this short sentence is the very essence of Gorbachev! He took loans from the West and was ready to pay for them not only with the integrity of the community of socialist countries, but also with the existence of his own country.

In addition to the negotiations between Gorbachev and Kolya in Arkhyz, in December 1989 [a month after the fall of Berlin Wall] the Soviet leader met with French President Mitterrand in Kyiv. Mitterand invited Gorbachev to fly to Berlin together to support Honecker[then already an ex-leader of GDR]. Gorbachev’s reaction: “If you want to fly, fly! And I won’t go." I also remember how Thatcher suggested to Gorbachev not to resolve the issue with Germany exclusively personally, but to create a commission on this matter, which would include England, France and the USSR. Thatcher feared that as a result of the unification in the Gorbachev style, the western part of the country would swallow the eastern part, and instead of a single German nation, an “ossi-wessy” conflict would result. Gorbachev, in my presence, reacted to the proposal of the Iron Lady in this way: “I don’t want to wash their dirty laundry for the British and French, but I will support the unification of Germany.” This is how Moscow surrendered the GDR, and Honecker, and all the East Germans.

I know for sure that at the talks in Arkhyz, Helmut Kohl asked Gorbachev if Moscow intended to somehow help Erich Honecker, the SED and the entire socialist elite of the GDR. Kohl clearly thought that Moscow intended to help its German Genosses. But Gorbachev answered him: “These questions are your internal affair, and you know better how to deal with whom.”

But Gorbachev’s decision to “surrender” the GDR was not really his own. It was suggested to him in June 1989 by George W. Bush, when the Gorbachevs were in Washington. On the eve of this historical “hint”, the first lady of the United States, Barbara Bush, “just in case”, “treated” Raisa Maksimovna. These women worked in a well-coordinated tandem on the eve of the collapse of the USSR. In order for Gorbachev to commit another betrayal, one thing was needed: for “dear Barbara” and Raisa Maksimovna to pump up the sick ambitions of Mikhail Sergeyevich, and he - from the consciousness of his own historical importance -swelled like a soap bubble. In such a bloated state, he received his Nobel Peace Prize in 1990. It was both a payment for the betrayal of the socialist bloc, and an advance payment for the already planned and agreed upon collapse of the USSR.

Did Gorbachev rightfully receive the Nobel Prize? Maybe yes. By the same right, Judas received from Caiaphas his 30 pieces of silver.

[...part two]:

Ordinary members of the Central Committee spoke among themselves: it is not Brezhnev who rules in the USSR, but our home-grown “gang of four.” This “gang” included: Chairman of the KGB of the USSR Yuri Andropov, Minister of Defense of the USSR Dmitry Ustinov, the main ideologist of the CPSU Mikhail Suslov and Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Gromyko. Calling these people the “gang of four,” colleagues were right. These four pilfered all the power in our country. It was then, in essence, that the decline and agony of the Soviet Union began.

–You personally worked in Andrei Andreyevich Gromyko’s department then. Why do you think that the activities of the then head of the Soviet Foreign Ministry did not meet the important urgent needs of the USSR and the socialist bloc? As far as we remember, it was for his upholding of socialist interests that Gromyko received the nickname Mister No from the Americans.

–In the 1970s, the Americans forced the leadership of the FRG to place Pershing missile systems on its territory as a weapon for the first missile strike against the “Soviet threat”. If deployed, the Pershings would have been aimed directly at the GDR, which is related to the West Germans. German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who did not want the death of his compatriots and generally intended to prevent a catastrophe, offered the Soviet Union the following solution to this problem. At that time, our SS-4 and SS-5 class missiles were deployed in the Soviet groups of forces stationed in Eastern Europe. Schmidt suggested that Moscow should replace these missiles with newer Pioneer-class (aka SS-20) systems, on the condition that Pioneers would not have more warheads than previous missile systems. Schmidt, as the Federal Chancellor of the FRG, will put pressure on Washington, and then the Americans will not dare to deploy “Pershings”. Schmidt’s version was quite acceptable. In order to re-equip the missile arsenal in our groups of troops abroad, we did not need to once again rumble weapons all over Europe. After all, on the “SS-4” and “SS-5” there was a monoblock charge, and on the “pioneers” - a three-block charge. US missile manipulation in Germany posed a real threat to Europe, and the USSR had to prevent this threat.

I reported to Gromyko about American plans in the FRG and outlined Schmidt’s proposals on this matter. Andrei Andreevich, after listening to me, said something like “the old swindler Schmidt offers Moscow to exchange Soviet missiles for air through Falin.” “When the Americans place these Pershings in Germany, then we will talk!” - finished Gromyko. I replied: “When they place it, it will be too late.” Gromyko: “The word “late” does not exist in politics!”

Schmidt made his last attempt to convince Moscow when he flew from China to Bonn via Moscow. He tried to contact the Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Kosygin, who did not object to the plan of the German Chancellor regarding the “pioneers”. But instead of Kosygin, Schmidt was met by the stubborn Gromyko, and he flew away. After all, broken by a heart attack, the sick Kosygin by that time had already been actually removed from politics and was living out the last years of his life.

As a result, the Americans placed Pershings in the FRG, the balance of power in Europe tilted towards NATO, the strategic moment was lost, and our country became involved in a disastrous arms race, which then “ate” all our foreign exchange reserves and led the economy of our country to a crisis. The collapse of the USSR was a consequence of the Soviet economic crisis.

After all, under the “Pershings” in Germany, the Americans launched 12 military programs. We responded by launching our programs. In 1981, a new program was adopted for the European NATO countries, and for the US armed forces, the Army 2000 program. The USSR began to choke. Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the General Staff of the USSR Ministry of Defense, reported to the Politburo that the Soviet army was unable to resist this program. They answered him: if Ogarkov is such an expert on Western military affairs, then let him go to command the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, and the one who is able to fulfill the task set by the Party and the government will come to the General Staff. State Planning Committee Chairman Nikolai Baibakov reported to the Politburo that the country’s economy was unable to overcome the military confrontation with the Americans. In response, he heard: “Nikolai Konstantinovich, retire. In your place, someone will come who will do what he is ordered."

By the end of Brezhnev’s rule, reserves designed to boost the Soviet economy and improve social policy in the USSR were reduced by almost fifty percent. A crisis began, which by the mid-1980s had grown to such an extent that our country was on the verge of an abyss. The reason for this is the words of Andrei Gromyko that “it is never too late in politics.”

–If I may, let’s go directly to Mikhail Gorbachev, his team, perestroika and subsequent events.

-The main problem of Gorbachev is the absence of a human character in a person. It so happened that he became the head of the Soviet state, exactly at that difficult time. The time when in the USSR the gap between word and deed had already reached such a state that the party and the government could no longer ignore the most elementary demands and aspirations of the Soviet people.

At the same time, on the other side of the world, William Casey sat in the chair of CIA chief. Casey proposed to Reagan to create a sharp drop in hydrocarbon prices on the world market. At the behest of Reagan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates created an oversupply of oil trading, and the price of a barrel of oil fell from $25-$26 to $8. And with it the flow of petrodollars, with which our country paid,first of all, for the import of consumer goods (40% of consumer goods) and - much more than that - medicines that we bought abroad in the countries of the socialist community. The CMEA was closed, everyone began living from paycheck to paycheck. What a dumb decision! When I headed the international department of the Central Committee, I tried to object, to say that it was impossible to act like that. It was necessary, first, to start a policy of sufficiency in the field of military armaments. Engaging in the arms race, responding to the challenge of the United States, we acted not so much against the United States as against our own country. We served the American strategy of bringing the USSR to death.

Gorbachev came to power without any personal program. His thesis was the principle of Napoleon: let’s get into the fight, and then we’ll see. After Mikhail Sergeevich lost himself in politics, he tried at all costs to maintain his reputation, or at least the appearance of this reputation. He was ready to pay for it, like a Shakespearean hero, with the difference that in the end he gave the whole kingdom for a horse. Gorbachev was a bark beetle for our Motherland. He acted according to the principle of Clausewitz: Russia can only be defeated from within. So he won, gnawed at the roots, and the tree withered and died. He was assisted in this by Eduard Shevardnadze, Alexander Yakovlev and other personalities attached to them.

–Tell us about Alexander Yakovlev. He was the “foreman of perestroika”, and under Yeltsin he became the main ideologist of Russian democracy. [...end of part two]

Very interesting read, I wish I knew more about this stuff than I do so I guess I've got to read more. So much of the Soviet destruction in particular is learning the ins and outs of a particular club of old men, so I feel like an inescapable conclusion is that the key place where the Soviets failed while China succeeded was in creating a people's party and program that persisted well beyond the ambitions and drama of its leadership.

I swear its like every moment things could've been salvaged, or every figure who saw what was really happening connects back to Gromyko. You should've seized power brother, you could've saved us

Commenting to save.

Enlightening, enraging, tragic.

I know you were a little reluctant to post this outside of the bulletin megathread but I'm glad you did. This is deserving of a lot more eyes.