Is Brexit a Chance to Heal Europe's Wounds?

Sergey Radchenko

Politics, Europe

Gorbachev saw a united Europe as an aspiration. It’s still within reach.

Three months before he became the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev visited Great Britain. Speaking to Members of Parliament on December 18, 1984, Gorbachev announced the concept that would later define his approach to Europe and to the post–Cold War world that he helped inaugurate. “Europe,” he said, “is our common home. A home, and not a ‘theater of military operations.’”

Gorbachev was ahead of his peers. Europe was in the grip of fear. After 1979 rhetoric escalated across the divided continent: the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, martial law in Poland and rattling of nuclear missiles on both sides of the Iron Curtain comprised a grim political climate. Gorbachev’s reminder of the civilizational unity of Europe—“Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals,” as Charles de Gaulle once described it—cut right through the divisions: the East versus the West, the Warsaw Pact versus NATO and socialism versus capitalism. For Gorbachev, Europe was not just the most important partner of a reformed Soviet Union; it was a destination.

The closest Gorbachev came to realizing his vision was in 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. Germany was reunified. Post–Cold War Europe, it seemed, would have a clean start; it would be more inclusive, open and spacious.