International security/There was no referendum in East Germany

Ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, whose effort made possible the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990, has criticized a parliamentary resolution denouncing this historic event as an act of aggression.

“You cannot evaluate the events that took place in a different epoch, in different times from today’s positions,” Gorbachev told Interfax new agency. “What referendum could they launch in the German Democratic Republic when in both states – in the East and in the West they held rallies with hundreds of thousands of participants under just one slogan, ‘We are one nation!’ What sort of annexation is this?”

Gorbachev blasts lawmakers’ suggestion to denounce Germany unification as ‘rubbish’