Meeting in Moscow, Gorbachev signaled that the Soviet Union would not block the reunification of East and West Germany, provided the process respected the security interests of neighboring states. The announcement accelerated the diplomatic process that culminated in German reunification on October 3, 1990, less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Three months after East Germans tore down the Berlin Wall with hammers and bare hands, the fate of a divided Germany still hung on decisions made far from Berlin—in Moscow, where Mikhail Gorbachev held the ultimate veto power as the Soviet Union still garrisoned hundreds of thousands of troops in East Germany.
When Chancellor Helmut Kohl arrived in Moscow, he found Gorbachev more pragmatic than expected. The Soviet leader, already juggling economic crisis at home and reform movements across Eastern Europe, told Kohl that Germans themselves should decide whether to reunify, a remarkable concession given that a reunified Germany firmly in the Western camp represented precisely the outcome Soviet policy had sought to prevent since 1945.
Gorbachev's only conditions involved ensuring the process unfolded gradually and accounted for the security concerns of Germany's neighbors, particularly regarding NATO. Those details would occupy negotiators for months, but the fundamental question was settled in this meeting. Within eight months, formal reunification was complete, and the Soviet Union itself would collapse within two years, a set of dominoes Gorbachev had, wittingly or not, helped topple.