Documents recently smuggled out of Moscow have revealed the chaos that immediately preceded and followed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the Warsaw Pact regimes. In particular, it turns out that Margaret Thatcher, that heroine of freedom who reputedly stared down Communism and brought liberty to the East,
actually flew to Moscow to press Gorbachev to stop the reunification of Germany, in the interests of stability.
“We do not want a united Germany,” she said. “This would lead to a change to postwar borders, and we cannot allow that because such a development would undermine the stability of the whole international situation and could endanger our security.”
Thatcher wasn't alone in this; French President François Mitterrand was also vehemently opposed to German reunification and was even considering a military alliance with the USSR, under the guise of "fighting natural disasters" to shore up the Iron Curtain.
I'm sure it's no coincidence, but there I was today promenading down Brunswick st and what should be on sale (in a shop whose contens, all clothes, seemed to be largely black and white, with a nod to greyscale) but a t-shirt with on the front a photo of the wall coming down, citizens atop, etc.