[gaius]

Actually, as has been revealed, Margaret Thatcher was forcibly against east Germany reuniting with west Germany at a time when the Russians wanted it

At that point in history Gorbachev was in a precarious position and Thatcher worried that giving up East Germany might see him forced from office and hardliners taking over. Mitterand also opposed reunification for much the same reason.

[philwelch]

There was, in fact, a coup against Gorbechev shortly afterwards, bearing out the fears of Thatcher and Mitterand.

Of course, the coup petered out, Boris Yeltsin climbed atop one of the tanks and addressed the crowd of anti-Communist protesters who had assembled outside of the Russian Parliament building, and the Soviet Union promptly collapsed, which is not a series of events that anyone in the West had predicted.