TRANSFORMATION WATCH: THE DEATH OF THE USSR — AN APPROPRIATE TIME TO SEND THE ‘LAST’ COMMUNIST BACK TO GERMANY ON A SEALED TRAIN

(Washington, D.C.): In 1917,
Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany
perpetrated what was, arguably,
the foulest crime ever to befall
the long-suffering Russian
people. It sent V.I. Lenin — an
avowed communist and incipient
leader of the Bolsheviks — back
to Russia in the hope that he
would foster a revolution that
would permit a separate peace to
be made and the Eastern front
shut down. In a marvelous
metaphor for the viral
ideological infection he
represented, the Germans sent
Lenin home on a sealed train.

It would be both poetic
justice and an important litmus
test of Boris Yeltsin’s
commitment to a complete
break with the communist Soviet
Union if the Russian president
were now to send Erich Honecker
back to Germany on a sealed train
or aircraft. Honecker is, after
all, one of the last men in the
former Soviet bloc to describe
himself unapologetically as a
communist.

The ironic parallels do not
end there, however. Like Lenin,
Honecker was also spirited out of
Germany. On 14 March 1991, Soviet
troops managed to extract the
former East German premier
despite a warrant for his
arrest on charges of
having ordered the GDR’s border
troops to shoot-to-kill those
trying to escape his Leninist
totalitarian regime. As reported
the following day by the Center
for Security Policy in a paper
entitled “Nacht
Und Nebel: The Honecker
Affair,” this
feat was evidently accomplished
in the best tradition of
collusion between the German
government and Soviet communists.

For its part, Bonn was
evidently anxious to avoid any
embarrassment that Honecker might
cause were he to reveal on the
stand past support West Germany
had provided him and his
compatriots in the name of Ostpolitik.
For their part, Gorbachev’s
clique were no less keen to
prevent Moscow’s former client
from disclosing information that
would reveal the degree to which
the East German Stasi and the
Soviet KGB had successfully
compromised political figures and
Western security.

If not for the purpose of
ensuring that Honecker does
indeed disclose this damning
information, Yeltsin should send
Honecker back to Germany, rather
than to North Korea (which
has offered to extend medical
care to its former partner in
communist crime) as a
tangible sign that the days of
Lenin are genuinely over.
Should he do otherwise on the eve
of the nominally formal end of
the Soviet empire, he risks
signalling a dangerous degree of
continuity with the discredited
Gorbachev regime.

Scarcely less important than
the taking of such steps to break
with the old order by former
Soviet subjects are the steps the
West must take. As the attached
editorial published in today’s New
York Times by Vladimir
Bukovsky — one of the most
heroic and insightful of Soviet
dissidents — makes clear, the
United States and its allies have
contributed immeasurably to the
perpetuation of Lenin’s system.
It is therefore, high time that
Washington recognize Russia,
Ukraine and the other republics
and the Commonwealth of
Independent States; indeed, our
break with the old Soviet order
should not wait until 1 January
1992, but should occur at
once.