The European Union, the Soviet Union, and the End of the Cold War

Presenters: Daviti Gachechiladze Mariam Zuliashvili Diana

IntroductionMain reasons for European integration

project: Avoiding next possible beginning of war by Germany Creation of “bulwark” against Soviet threat

Questions to be discussed: If not the Soviet-dominated Eastern bloc, would West European

elites have moved towards the common market with supranational political aspirations?

How were seismic processes (collapse of the Berlin Wall; German unification; the end of the cold war…) happening in Europe connected?

Did the weakening and then abrupt disappearance of the Soviet Union shape the trajectory of the European project at it sought to intensify integration?

Twin Events of East and West: Warsaw Pact alliance – North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA known as Comecon, 1949) –

Marshall Plan Unlike the EC, the CMEA did not rest on an explicit or even

implicit principle of supranationality Lacking the capability of formulate common foreign economic

objectives, the EC did not seek to stand in for its member states in their evolving economic relations with the Soviet Union and its satellites

East-West relations in Europe, 1945-85

View from the East From the vantage point of the CMEA, the view to EC was

openly hostile 1962, EC addressed by Soviets as “an economic and

political reality” – attempt to convince the allies in the wisdom of deepening the CMEA’s level of integration.

Members of Soviet bloc begin to see the economic inefficiencies with respect to the Western democracies

Doctrinal qualms of Soviet allies caused by foreign trade and economic cooperation

Deal between Moscow and its satellites

View from the EastIncising trade between the Western and Eastern Europe

The EC’s response

Western Europe gaining trust from the Soviet bloc

Helsinki Accords – the final agreement “Change through Trade”Finally EC made the Eastern Europe trade

profitable for itself and it made it increasingly difficult for the individual CMEA members to shun the EC

EAST AND WEST

1980 –a decline in trade between EC & CMEA countries

Less significant growth of trade with East Europe

Steady fall in East countries' share of Western imports cut imports from West

Ratification of SEA (sig European act)The procedural innovations in council of

ministers.Debates about Sea

Contributors agreed that the initiative was driven by elites and that the impetus for the far-reaching internal reforms came largely from beyond the European continent

PERESTROIKA

Reform movements in Poland, Hungary and soviet Union, shaped by achievements of Western capitalism

Psychological Shock of Soviet Union

Gorbachov’s programme of perestroika

The closer ties between Soviet Union And west Germany

Soviet Union’s Hopes AboutSwaying European public opinion on issues

like conventional disarmament stationing of short-rage nuclear missilesSeeking to unleash a process of normalization

in EuropeEventual reunification of the continent on

terms that transcended the cold war divide

Perestroika, or economic reformed aimed the complete modernization of the socialist economy depended on improved access to and utilization of Western technology.

Soviet Union worried that Europe won’t construct the “common house”

Germany reacted with great enthusiasm, seeing in Gorbachov’s reforms a clear path to a reduction in East-West tensions.

British Government reacted with acute mistrust and speculated that they were up to their old tricks of sewing divisions within the West

The French worried bout the Germans and the possibility that they would forsake Western Europe for a chance at eventual reunification

German Unification

connection between integration in the West and Disintegration in the East

Demonstrations in Bonn8th of November-calling all

German dialogue

With the unexpected fall of Berlin Wall on 9th of November 1989, the issue of German unification jumped to the top of the East-West agenda. The gradualist approach to unification seemed especially wise in light of uncertainty about Moscow’s reaction. Yet, by the end of November East Germany started to provoke Bonn by disquiet.

The failure of gradualismAbortive searching for a “third way” was

aimed to avoid unification by saving unique and valued components of the East German economic model.

“Ten point plan for German Unity” By Helmut Kohl

Democratic national elections in east Germany

5 New states of Germany

Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia

Thatcher cautioned against the “rush” resolution of German question

Francois Mitterrand described the unification as “a legal and political impossibility”