ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the speech of Andrei Kortunov and this piece first appeared in the Moscow News Weekly, No. 46, 1990. Andrei Kortunov is a political scientist in the Soviet Union. Germany bears special responsibility for the solution of the "Soviet issue". Germany is prepared to help them establish themselves in the Soviet Union, but the Soviet authorities haven't even solved the question of German autonomy and thus are encouraging their emigration. The recent visit of the Soviet President to the Federal Republic of Germany was bound to be successful. Problems involved in the issue of the united Germany's future niche in Europe's structures, its membership in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the status of Soviet troops stationed on German soil. And prospects of trade and other economic ties between the USSR and the FRG were solved mainly before the visit, so that the two leaders had only to symbolically proclaim the agreements as "historic".
