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A. Yes. When one is as old as I, one does not easily change one's ideological hats. My father, who had a Jewish bourgeois background, became a pacifist after his experience in World War I. He soon saw that after the failure of the revolution in Germany in 1918, society could only be changed if a communist ideology were adopted. I believe that mankind's striving for justice and freedom led to the creation of the communist ideology. I reject what always has been a central issue in communism: power, the struggle to obtain it and to keep it. I believe that this is one of the main reasons for the failure of the communist system.
Q. What do you think when you look at a united Germany and the demise of East Germany?
A. I do not wish to turn back the clock, but I, like many other people living in this part of united Germany, am not happy about the way the unification took place. I do not believe that the state and society in which I am now living have discovered absolute truth. I do not believe that this society will be able to solve the major problems facing mankind either in Germany or elsewhere. Communism and socialism have been so compromised that an alternative left-wing movement has been fragmented and deprived of its inherent force. I do not expect to live to see the emergence of a new alternative, but I do still believe one will develop to correct the dark sides of this society.
Q. Among readers of spy novels you may be better known as Karla than as Markus Wolf. Have you read the novels of John le Carre? Do you see yourself in his Karla character?
A. At first I had read only The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, but now I have read some others as well. I am not sure that I am the model for Karla. Maybe I will have a chance to put that question to Mr. Le Carre.
Q. When do you expect to meet him?
A. I am not sure. Some TV people are planning something. I am not pushing for it, but it may happen. I have been reading his books, and Tom Clancy's too. I'm trying to read Clancy in English to improve my command of the language, and maybe we can have a talk sometime.
Q. What do you think of the Le Carre novels? Are they realistic?
A. Yes, especially his first book. The classic espionage book for me is Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana. That is the best. I recently read Le Carre's The Russia House, and I have some criticism. If we had done it together, I think it would have been better.