of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, laid bare the linkage for the Americans in his address to a joint session of Congress on 21 February 1990: ... I often hear the question: How can the United States of America help us today? My reply is as paradoxical as the whole of my life has been: You can help us most of all if you help the Soviet Union on its irreversible, but immensely complicated road to democracy....[T]he sooner, the more quickly, and the more peacefully the Soviet Union begins to move along the road toward genuine political pluralism, respect for the rights of nations to their own integrity and to a working—that is a market—economy, the better it will be, not just for Czechs and Slovaks, but for the whole world. When the United States needed help with Germany's reunification, Gorbachev proved to be instrumental in bringing solutions to the "German problem" and Bush acknowledged that "Gorbachev was moving the USSR in the right direction". Bush, in his own words, even gave praise to Gorbachev "to salute the man" in acknowledgment of the Soviet leader's role as "the architect of perestroika... [who had] conducted the affairs of the Soviet Union with great restraint as Poland and Czechoslovakia and GDR... and other countries [that had] achieved their independence", and who was "under extraordinary pressure at home, particularly on the economy." References Further reading External links Mikhail Gorbachev on perestroika Chris Harman & Andy Zebrowski. Glasnost – before the storm (Summer 1988) Yakovlev on perestroika The Economic Collapse of the Soviet Union Perestroika – TM in Ukraine The Decline of the Soviet Union: A Hypothesis on Industrial Paradigms, Technological Revolutions and the Roots of Perestroika by Angelo Segrillo 1980s economic history Soviet phraseology Economy of the Soviet Union Soviet internal politics Dissolution of the Soviet Union 1980s in the Soviet Union 1980s in politics Mikhail Gorbachev Political catchphrases Reform in the Soviet Union Russian words and phrases