Gorbachev speaks a little German. He liked to tell the anecdote about teh first time he was in East Berlin. It seems Honecker had arranged for lots of the fruit of German youth to assemble and so lots of nice things about East Germany for the Soviet leader. Instead, they shouted "Gorbachev, save us!"
My ex-fiancee is half-German. All the men in her grandmother's family were purged by Stalin in WWII because of suspected loyalty to Germany.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ------------------
Scott wrote:
Putin speaks fluent German because it was once his job, as the KGB officer charged with stealing western technology via inter-German contacts. I didn't know that Gorbachev spoke German at all. There used to be an outfit in Leipzig called Robotron that manufactured unlicensed zx80 clones in the late 80's. You can still get software for them off the 'Net. It was one of Putin's babies.