ABSTRACT
Germans and Russians have a long history of contact, cooperation, competition, conflict, and reconciliation. The United States, as West Germany's principal security partner, cannot help but wonder what German-Soviet collaboration could mean for the security of Europe, for its own interests, and for the solidity of the German-American relationship. The aristocrats of Russia and of Central and Eastern Europe mingled with Prussia's or Germany's in the salons and spas of Europe before World War I. German-American differences diminished as East-West relations soured in the latter 1970s, but that amelioration was deceptive. Helmut Kohl used his principal speech in Moscow to reiterate the German desire for reunification and to state that any progress in German-Soviet relations had to include Berlin. Mikhail Gorbachev spoke of the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic as members of a "common European home," but he observed that Moscow recognized West Germany's links to other countries and the obligations it had assumed.
