Vyacheslav Kochemasov

Vyacheslav Kochemasov (1918–1998) was a Russian diplomat and politician.
He was the Soviet Ambassador to East Germany from 1983 till 1990. His term included the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 which effectively heralded the end, in 1990, of the German Democratic Republic. The Soviet government played a key role in this process.

Kochemasov became a member of the Communist Party in 1942. Directly after the end of World War II he became an official in the international section of the Young Communist League (Komsomol). After that, between 1955 and 1960, he worked at the Soviet Embassy in East Berlin.

From 1966 till 1983 he was deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers for the Russian Federation. At the same time he held leadership positions in the "All-union society for protecting Culture and Historical Monuments" and with the Rossotrudnichestvo. Between 1966 and 1983 he was listed as a candidate for membership of the Central Committee: between June 1983 and June 1990 he was a full member of it.

In 1983 Yuri Andropov, the new Soviet leader, appointed Kochemasov to succeed Peter Abrassimov as Soviet Ambassador to East Germany. In 1985 a new generation took over at the Kremlin as Mikhail Gorbachev became Soviet Party Secretary in March 1985. Gorbachev took a substantially changed approach to relations between Moscow and East Berlin, but Vyacheslav Kochemasov nevertheless remained in his ambassadorial post for more than five of the Perestroika-Glasnost years that ensued.

During the evening of 9 November 1989, as The Berlin Wall came down, there was widespread speculation as to how the Soviet Ambassador to the German Democratic Republic might react. Vyacheslav Kochemasov did nothing.It was later reported that on the evening of 9 November, he had tried, without success, to telephone Mikhail Gorbachev and then the Soviet Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, for instructions. During the reunification process Kochemasov continued to represent his country's interests.

In this connection it was Kochemasov who on 16 April 1990 handed over to East Germany's recently elected prime minister, Lothar de Maizière, the so-called "Non-paper" which set out, unofficially and in an informal manner, the Soviet Union's eleven ground-rules for the rapidly unfolding reunification of East and West Germany.The note recorded that Article 23 of the East German constitution clearly rejected a union of the two German states and also rejected membership of NATO for a reunited Germany.

At the beginning of June 1990 Vyacheslav Kochemasov, now aged nearly 72, was recalled to Moscow and entered into retirement. His successor as Soviet Ambassador to East Germany was Gennadi Schikin.

Kochemasov died in 1998 in Moscow. He is buried, with his wife Ziniaida Nicolaevna, a highly qualified medical doctor, in the Troyekurovskoye Cemetery on the western edge of Moscow.

On tensions in East German government during the Perestroika years

The extent to which East Germany's leader Erich Honecker and his inner circle felt unsettled and undermined by on-going Perestroika in the Soviet Union became more widely known after Honecker himself had retired. In 1992 Kochemasov gave a remarkable interview to the western press, disclosing that as far back as 1986 a senior member of the East German government, Werner Krolikowski had told him, in confidence, that the situation in the country's SED Politburo had become "unbearable": policy decisions were totally driven by dogma, there was no longer any discussion, there was an absurd level of centralisation and an utterly implausible communications strategy. Something must be done: the leader must be replaced.

On the limitations imposed on a Warsaw bloc leader's autonomy by the Brezhnev Doctrine

The year before he died Kochemasov gave another western press interview in which he concentrated on the events of November 1989 and their aftermath. He confirmed that the Brezhnev Doctrine had left an East German head of state with surprisingly little autonomy. He recalled that he had been invited to interpret an instruction from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that long running demonstrations in Leipzig should be brought under control, regardless of how it was done. The East German leader Erich Honecker and his successor Egon Krenz were unable to agree whether Gorbachev's instruction amounted to a mandate to suppress the Leipzig demonstration using force. Kochemasov, representing the Soviet viewpoint had immediately supported the Krenz interpretation that force should on no account be used against the Leipzig demonstrators. He had also, for the avoidance of any doubt, then lost no time in communicating the same interpretation to Soviet army commanders based in East Germany.

On the Gorbachev strategy over East Germany

The same interview included discussion on whether prosecuting of the country's former leaders for the killings of people trying to escape from East Germany represented a treaty breach by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Kochemasov believed that court actions against former East German leaders represented a breach of a gentlemen's agreement between Kohl and Gorbachev, implying that Gorbachev had been too trusting in his dealings with the West German leader. But as far as Kochemasov knew there had been no express treaty provision or other documented agreement covering the issue.

At the end of the interview, when pushed for an opinion, Kochemasov confirmed that in terms of the fundamental interests of the Soviet Union, he believed that Gorbachev had shown excessive and unnecessary weakness over German reunification.

• Order of Lenin
• Order of the Red Banner of Labour