Lasting stability requires that people live reconciled with their life styles, with their ability to realise values, with their governments. Clear analysis will prevent us from indulging in a false nostalgia for these times. It is not our task to save communism or to stabilize communist regimes against the will of their own peoples. Our goal is to assist the transformation of communism and its transition towards freedom, democracy and self-determination. Our interest is to see this happen in an evolutionary and peaceful way.
Nobody can be interested to see the systemic change in the East result in violent crashes.
The consequences might be disastrous. I see current Soviet thinking on the future shape of Europe, ill-defined and ambiguous as it still is, as the disillusioned quest for the retention of a European status quo. However, Soviet thought is evolving, and it may evolve in time towards a more mature view. But the concept of a Common European House must not be used to freeze processes of structural change nor must it be used to create an artificial dividing line between the Europeans and their transatlantic partners. Self-determination for all Europeans is the call of the future and the Germans must participate in it as much as anybody else.