TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/012990/0129007.000

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                                                                                WORLD, Page 50

EASTERN EUROPE

Resurrecting Ghostly Rivalries


Eastern Europe discovers that national hatreds and prejudices
increasingly haunt the land

By BRUCE W. NELAN -- Reported by Kenneth W. Banta/London, John
Borrell/Sofia and Ken Olsen/Bonn


    A bronze equestrian statue of Czar Alexander II dominates
the cobblestone square in front of the parliament building in
Sofia. It was erected by grateful Bulgarians to commemorate
Russian victories in 1877 and 1878 that ended five centuries of
Turkish rule over the Slavic nation. Since the resignation of
Stalinist dictator Todor Zhivkov last November, that statue has
become the rallying point for a revived nationalist movement
using the old hatred of the Turks to fight new political
battles. Day after day, thousands of Bulgarians ignored sub-zero
temperatures to gather around it. They shook their fists and
cheered rabble-rousing speeches protesting a decision by the
country's new reformist government to restore to 1.2 million
ethnic Turks the civil and religious rights they lost in 1984.
"Turks to Turkey!" they roared. "Bulgaria for the Bulgarians!"

    At the same time that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is
facing separatist challenges in several of his country's 15
republics, Eastern Europe is discovering that the ancient
animosities suppressed for more than four decades by Moscow's
harsh imperialism are rising again. These ethnic and
nationalistic quarrels are the products of decades of wars,
treaties and cynical deals between dictators that moved the
borders of countries but often left their people behind. At the
end of the 20th century, national minorities are everywhere. By
some estimates, several hundred thousand ethnic Germans are
still in Poland and 200,000 in Rumania. More than a million
Poles find themselves inside the Soviet Union. About 1.7 million
Hungarians live in Rumania, and a few hundred thousand more in
Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. There are 2 million Rumanians in
Soviet Moldavia and an unknown number in the Ukraine.

    In times of confusion and hardship, desperate politicians
often cannot resist the temptation to use ethnic minorities as
scapegoats. The sudden arrival of new freedoms in the Warsaw
Pact states at the end of 1989 has brought with it a broadened
right to be demagogic and irresponsible, threatening the
region's proclaimed goals of democracy, cooperation and
stability. "People are able to make decisions for themselves
again, and they are starting at grade one," says Deyan
Kyurianov, a leader of Bulgaria's opposition Union of
Democratic Forces. "Nationalism is easy to understand and quick
to arouse."

    The Bulgarian turmoil is a classic of ethnic politics.
Zhivkov tried to solve the minority problem by denying the Turks
a separate existence and forcing them to assimilate or flee to
Turkey. His successor, Petar Mladenov, reversed that policy.
Prime Minister Georgi Atanasov told angry demonstrators, "If we
Bulgarians want to be free, then all the people must be free."
Last week the National Assembly approved measures that guarantee
rights for the Turks, and set up a commission to review the
issue.

    Neighboring Rumania is emerging from the Ceausescu tyranny
with two ethnic traumas. In the west, almost half the country
consists of the disputed region of Transylvania, where most of
Rumania's ethnic Hungarians live. Ceausescu regularly accused
them of sabotage and planned to destroy their villages and force
them into housing complexes. Delighted at Ceausescu's fall, the
Hungarians still wonder if the new government will treat them
fairly. Case in point: the handling of Laszlo Tokes, the
dissident Hungarian clergyman in the town of Timisoara whose
harassment by Ceausescu's forces in December helped spark the
revolt that eventually toppled the regime. Although Tokes was
later named to the ruling National Salvation Front, he is still
being guarded by the army in a remote northern village.
Ostensibly it is for his own safety, but Tokes's father claims
that the real reason is to prevent him from becoming a Hungarian
folk hero.

    To the east lies the Soviet republic of Moldavia, which
Stalin created in 1940, when he annexed Bessarabia in a deal
with Hitler. During the years when Ceausescu kept his people
hungry and cold to sell food and fuel abroad, there was little
reason for the 2 million Rumanians on the Soviet side of the
border to long for home. Now, with democratic elections
scheduled for April, some Moldavians have called for
reunification with Rumania. Meanwhile, Rumania's newly recreated
National Peasant Party has called for the return of the lost
territory. To deflect just such demands, Moscow promised it
would open the long-frozen border with Rumania for tourism and
trade. Last week it announced that visas are no longer required
for brief visits.

    After World War II, the Soviet Union bit off a large chunk
of eastern Poland and compensated for it by moving Poland's
border with Germany westward to the banks of the Oder and Neisse
rivers. When the German territories of Silesia and Pomerania
thus became Polish, more than 3 million Germans fled or were
expelled, but hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans remain.
In a series of postwar treaties, including the Helsinki Final
Act of 1975, signed by 35 states, West Germany has promised not
to challenge the new frontiers of Europe. But Bonn insists that
final agreement must await a peace treaty formally ending the
war, a step that the cold war prevented.


    Most West Germans dismiss the idea of reclaiming their
former territories. But revanchist organizations, which include
some of the survivors of the Germans who left the east, continue
to use the issue as a political weapon. Hartmut Koschyk, head
of the 2 million-member Association of Expellees, suggests that
a "compromise" with Poland could work out a border
"territorially in the middle."

    In Paris last week, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said
soothingly that "the Germans have no intention of provoking in
the Europe of the future a discussion about frontiers" that
would disrupt the Continent. But he again stopped short of
saying Bonn has no territorial claims against Poland, insisting
that he could not speak for both German states on the issue.
With a national election in December, he apparently does not
want to risk losing votes to the ultra-right-wing Republican
Party.

    Some 3 million of Germany's expellees were uprooted from
the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia seized by Hitler in
1938. The power of those old passions was demonstrated when
Vaclav Havel, shortly before he was elected President of
Czechoslovakia, observed that in a spirit of reconciliation the
country might offer an apology to the ethnic Germans who were
forced out of their Sudetenland homes after the war. Communist
hard-liners in Czechoslovakia spotted the mischief potential in
that comment and made sure everyone knew what Havel had said.
Sure enough, outraged demonstrators marched in Prague demanding
that no apology be given, and Havel's organization, the Civic
Forum, had to announce that none was planned.

    Yugoslavia, composed entirely of ethnic minorities, broke
from Moscow in 1948 but was held tightly together by its
forceful first President, Josip Broz Tito. Since his death in
1980, ties among the country's six republics and two autonomous
regions have loosened, and an ambitious Serbian nationalist,
Slobodan Milosevic, has become wildly popular among his fellow
Serbs. But his strident chauvinism and the rest of the
federation's fears of the Serbs, who account for more than 8
million of Yugoslavia's 24 million people, could be pushing the
country toward disintegration. Milosevic has reasserted Serbian
control over Kosovo, the historic cradle of Serbian culture and
religion but today an autonomous enclave where 90% of the 1.9
million population is Albanian. In the process, he has touched
off violent riots and alienated much of the rest of Yugoslavia.

    The northern Yugoslav republic of Slovenia, fearful of
rising Serbian hegemony, voted in September to confirm its right
to secede. By banning a rally of Serbs in the Slovenian capital
of Ljubljana last month, the province's Communist leader, Milan
Kucan, has become a local hero. Communist Party officials from
around the country began meeting last weekend in Belgrade to
discuss and possibly approve the creation of a multiparty system
for April elections and an end to the Communist monopoly on
power. Opponents of the plan predicted it would produce parties
that would foster local nationalism and trigger the breakup of
the nation. Jelena Milojevic, head of the Yugoslav Socialist
Alliance, vowed that Communist youth organizations would oppose
"chauvinistic and separatist groups." Said she, in a statement
that could apply to much of the region: "Self-proclaimed leaders
blinded by hatred are appearing from the darkness of the past
and using any means in their struggle for power."

    Pope John Paul II, who was born in Poland, has called for
"vigilance," warning that "conflicts between ethnic minorities
can be rekindled and nationalistic feelings can be exacerbated."
The European Community, Japan and the U.S. can help relieve the
ethnic pressures with economic cooperation and technical-aid
programs. At a two-day meeting in Paris last week,
representatives of 27 Western nations laid the groundwork for
a $12 billion development bank to channel loans to emerging
private businesses in the Warsaw Pact countries. But money
without artful diplomacy will not completely exorcise the
ghostly rivalries that increasingly haunt Eastern Europe.



____________________________________________________________
  FIVE TROUBLED REGIONS IN AN ETHNIC PATCHWORK


    1) POLAND. Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans still
live in the mineral-rich Silesian region of southwestern Poland
and in the former provinces of Pomerania and East Prussia, where
millions lived before World War II, when the lands were part of
Germany. Silesia was awarded to Poland in 1945, and most local
Germans were expelled or fled to the West. Right-wing
politicians in West Germany refuse to abandon claims to the
area.


    2) RUMANIA. Most of the 1.7 million ethnic Hungarians in
Rumania live in the northwestern province of Transylvania, which
was part of Hungary until 1918 and has a higher standard of
living and education than the rest of Rumania. Their persecution
by the Ceausescu regime provoked angry protests from Budapest
and reinforced demands for Transylvania's return to Hungary.


    3) YUGOSLAVIA. Albanians make up 90% of the population in
Yugoslavia's southern province of Kosovo, across the border from
Albania. Tension between Kosovo's Albanians and the surrounding
republic of Serbia, where Yugoslavia's largest and most powerful
national group lives, has intensified throughout the past
decade. Serbs fear that Kosovo's Albanians may seek unification
with Albania.


    4) BULGARIA. Five centuries of Turkish rule left 1.2
million ethnic Turks in Bulgaria. Under former leader Todor
Zhivkov, they were forced to adopt Bulgarian names and abandon
their Muslim religion. The new reformist government repealed
the repressive measures, but local nationalists, perhaps egged
on by hard-line Communists, have protested the restoration of
cultural and religious rights to the Turks.


    5) MOLDAVIA. The Soviet republic of Moldavia was
established by Stalin in 1940, combining Bessarabia, which he
had annexed from Rumania, with an existing territory in the
U.S.S.R. The population remains two-thirds Rumanian, and the
fall of Ceausescu has stirred interest on both sides of the
border in the possible return of Bessarabia to Rumania.