Document No. 118: Diary of Anatoly Chernyaev regarding German Reunification, January 28, 1990

This record from Chernyaev’s diary provides an illuminating portrait of internal Soviet deliberations about German unification. The Soviet general secretary calls together his closest foreign policy advisers, three of whom (Kryuchkov, Akhromeyev, and Falin) would subsequently blame Gorbachev for the “loss” of Germany. But here, all take solace in Helmut Kohl’s commitment to keeping the course of German unification within the larger all-European process.

They seem to understand, already in la...