A month before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev visited East Germany. The diaries of his advisor
Anatoly Chernyaev provide a crucial historic record of the scenes:
“The crowds chant ‘Gorby! Gorby!’ and no one is paying any attention to [East German leader] Erich (Honecker). At the rallies, people hold up posters in Russian that read: ‘Gorbachev, you are our hope.’”
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine the unprecedented scope of “Gorba-mania” at the time, or a situation in which the leader of one country is exponentially more popular abroad than at home.
Chernyaev explained the phenomenon well: “At the time, we didn’t comprehend, and we couldn’t comprehend, the terror with which Europe viewed our military might, our 1968 [invasion of Czechoslovakia] and our [war in] Afghanistan, nor the shock felt by Europeans after the installation of the SS-20 [ballistic missiles]. We didn’t want to know anything about it, as we were busy showcasing the might of socialism. It was Gorby who took away that terror.”
Read more at: A Russian View on the Fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 Years On - The Moscow Times
“The crowds chant ‘Gorby! Gorby!’ and no one is paying any attention to [East German leader] Erich (Honecker). At the rallies, people hold up posters in Russian that read: ‘Gorbachev, you are our hope.’”
Nowadays, it’s hard to imagine the unprecedented scope of “Gorba-mania” at the time, or a situation in which the leader of one country is exponentially more popular abroad than at home.
Chernyaev explained the phenomenon well: “At the time, we didn’t comprehend, and we couldn’t comprehend, the terror with which Europe viewed our military might, our 1968 [invasion of Czechoslovakia] and our [war in] Afghanistan, nor the shock felt by Europeans after the installation of the SS-20 [ballistic missiles]. We didn’t want to know anything about it, as we were busy showcasing the might of socialism. It was Gorby who took away that terror.”
Read more at: A Russian View on the Fall of the Berlin Wall, 30 Years On - The Moscow Times
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