TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/121889/12188900.045

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 11.4 KB | 221 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 14

EAST-WEST

Out of Control?


As the Communist order unravels at blinding speed, confusion
looms

By Jill Smolowe


    The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In the
interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

    -- Antonio Gramsci, Italian Marxist philosopher (1891-1937)

    The great variety of symptoms that confronted the
Communists of East Germany and Czechoslovakia last week were not
morbid, but they did carry the risk of metastasizing into
something dangerous. As exhilarating as the rapid pace of change
may be, the tight grip of party rule that seemed unshakable just
weeks ago has loosened to the point of presenting both countries
with the prospect of events slipping out of control. Though the
revolution in East Berlin continues to outrace changes in
Prague, the dynamics of tumult are much the same in both
countries. Besieged party leaders grant one desperate concession
after another, hoping each move will quiet the mounting outcry
and preserve some measure of power for themselves. The
opposition's success begets bolder demands -- and party leaders
capitulate, further diminishing the very authority they hope to
maintain.

    East Germany's Communist Party granted the ultimate
concession when its leader, Egon Krenz, and the other nine
members of the Politburo resigned last week, along with the
entire 163-member Central Committee. Three days later, Krenz
stepped down as head of state, a move that left him stripped of
the powers he had inherited only a month and a half earlier from
his discredited predecessor, Erich Honecker. Manfred Gerlach,
who heads a small party until now bound to the Communists, was
named to replace Krenz in the ceremonial post of President.
Honecker meanwhile was in quick succession expelled from the
party, placed under house arrest and slapped with criminal
charges. An additional 104 party functionaries and eight former
Politburo members were also arrested.

    The wholesale dissolution of the party leadership left some
members with an uneasy sense that no one was in charge. But
Prime Minister Hans Modrow seemed in command as he appealed on
national television for calm, and the party hastily threw
together a temporary 25-member working group to fill the
leadership void. On Thursday the first talks between the
Communist Party and the opposition yielded agreements to
recommend parliamentary elections for May 6 and to rewrite the
constitution. In addition, the foundering party advanced an
emergency congress by a week to try to restore order and salvage
shreds of credibility from the wreckage.

    Meeting at East Berlin's Dynamo Football Club Gymnasium,
the 2,714 delegates overwhelmingly nominated as party leader
Gregor Gysi, a reformist lawyer who at 41 becomes the youngest
Communist boss in Eastern Europe. Only three months ago, Gysi
came under withering attack by hard-liners for representing the
opposition group New Forum in its bid for legal status. Now,
said Gysi after winning election, the Communists in East Germany
will be merely "one party among others."

    Meanwhile, Mikhail Gorbachev is confronting a political
crisis as the reforms he inspired in Eastern Europe begin to
haunt him at home. With Gorbachev's tacit blessing, East Germany
and Czechoslovakia have joined Hungary and Poland in abolishing
the Communist Party's constitutional monopoly on power.
Nonetheless, the Soviet leader has always insisted that the
party must retain its pre-eminence in his country if perestroika
is to succeed. Last week the Lithuanian legislature defied
Gorbachev's wishes and legalized rival political parties,
setting the stage for other Soviet republics to do the same.
This week radical delegates are expected to propose a debate in
the Congress of People's Deputies on whether to delete Article
6 of the national constitution, which enshrines the party's
"leading role" in Soviet society.

    In East Germany it remained uncertain whether the Communist
Party's last-ditch effort to fashion a new identity could save
it from extinction. With the party's upper echelon disgraced,
the taut discipline snapped down below. A half million of the
2.3 million cardholders have deserted the party in recent weeks,
and last week middle-ranking members joined the opposition
groups in crying for the departure of the power brokers who for
41 years imposed their rule. Citizens worked with the regular
People's Police to prevent the shredding and theft of
incriminating documents. Airline flights to Rumania were
suspended to block the removal of key documents. Police sealed
the offices of party leaders and searched other party members
as they exited their workplaces.

    Some citizens seemed determined to take matters into their
own hands. In one incident, about 100 people halted a man who
was leaving an East Berlin office of the dreaded Stasi (secret
police) with two suitcases in tow. When the man was handed over
to the police, they discovered currency worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars that was believed to be intended for party
officials. Two days later the man was found hanged in his jail
cell. The 25,000-man Stasi, meanwhile, was partly defanged by
the dismissal of its directorate and the reassignment of some
7,000 agents to customs detail.

    At one point, the government seemed intent on depicting a
mood of impending breakdown, as if trying to ensure its survival
by convincing people that only the present leaders could keep
blood from flowing in the streets. In a statement issued through
the state-run ADN news agency last Wednesday, the government
reported "growing indications of stormings of facilities and
installations of the National People's Army." But no mention was
made of where the assaults took place. In a separate appeal,
from the army, generals warned that they would not permit
disturbances at military installations and called on soldiers
to fulfill their duty "thoughtfully and reliably in these
fateful hours." That same day the Defense Council resigned,
leaving command of the 172,000-member armed forces in the hands
of the government and the new head of state.

    While army discipline never flagged, Modrow was plainly
worried about the Fighting Groups, the bands of factory workers
that function as the party's private army. Though the government
had announced that the groups would be disarmed, it remained
unclear how successful efforts were to get the group leaders to
surrender the keys to their armories.

    The issue of reunification with West Germany also seemed to
be galloping forward faster than anyone had anticipated. Until
now, the East German opposition has rejected calls for
reunification. But in Leipzig, more and more posters reading
GERMANY, ONE FATHERLAND are dotting the weekly demonstrations.
And the round-table discussions last Thursday between party
officials and opposition figures produced a call for a "new
relationship" with West Germany based on "confederative
structures." That echoed the language of a unification plan
unveiled by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl two weeks ago,
to the consternation of the British, the French and the Soviets,
among others.

    While East Germany faced a volatile situation -- the party
dissolving but a government still more or less intact --
Czechoslovakia faced a situation that was equally volatile but
opposite. The three-week-old party leadership of Karel Urbanek
was holding firm despite the defection of thousands of members.
Prague's government, however, was at a dangerous pass. After
the Civic Forum, the country's leading opposition group,
rejected a proposed new government that seated only five
non-Communists among the 21 ministers, Prime Minister Ladislav
Adamec warned, "I cannot act under pressure of one group of
citizens." When the Civic Forum refused to withdraw its demand
for half the seats in the Cabinet to be filled by
non-Communists, Adamec resigned.

    Within hours President Gustav Husak appointed Deputy Prime
Minister Marian Calfa, 43, a lawyer and relatively obscure
party member, as Prime Minister. The next day Calfa seemed to
meet the Civic Forum's request by offering the group half the
positions in a new Cabinet. Vaclav Havel, the dissident
playwright who leads the Civic Forum, entered into negotiations
with Calfa and seemed close to agreeing on the makeup of a
government. The political atmosphere was further cleansed with
the announcement Saturday night that the 76-year-old Husak would
step down as soon as he swore in a new Cabinet. As a quisling
installed by Moscow after the invasion of 1968, Husak has become
increasingly reviled, and his departure has been a prime demand
of the Civic Forum.

    Havel also declared he would be willing to serve as
President to help guide the country through its crisis. "If, God
help us, the situation develops in such a way that the only
service I could render my country would be to do this, then, of
course, I would do it," he said. Havel's announcement was
evidence of the opposition's new determination to insert itself
into the power vacuum. Abandoning its earlier plan to remain
nonpartisan, the Civic Forum proclaimed that along with its
Slovak counterpart, Public Against Violence, it would endorse
a slate of candidates in the parliamentary elections that it is
demanding by next July.

    So far, civility and generosity have characterized the
Czechoslovak revolt, which has seemed more methodical and less
reactive than the spontaneous actions in East Germany. But
Prague may yet follow a path that could impede reconstruction.
While Havel has promised the party there will be no purges,
cries for retribution began to be heard last week, resulting in
the party's expelling former party leader Milos Jakes and former
Prague party boss Miroslav Stepan. There are also continued
signs of fragmentation within the opposition, as is happening
in East Germany. But as yet, Havel continues to exert a moral
authority that seems to be holding the disparate forces
together.

    Shrewdly, the Civic Forum is taking steps to align itself
with sectors of the military. Havel announced the formation of
the Military Forum, a group within the armed forces that is
calling for a variety of reforms, including a shortening of
military service from two years to 18 months. The Civic Forum
exerted its power at the state level by forcing the resignation
of the cabinet in the dominant Czech republic and the
appointment of a new body that ceded nine of the 17 ministerial
posts to non-Communists. Three days later, the government of the
Slovak republic also quit.

    Only a gambler would wager on where the revolutions in East
Germany and Czechoslovakia will end. Negotiations and cool
heads may ultimately prevail, allowing the Communist Party to
help negotiate a future that will result in multiparty systems
along the lines of those evolving in Hungary and Poland.
Conversely, dissent could give way to anarchy that would trigger
a military crackdown. The current challenge for opposition
forces in both countries is to strike a delicate balance between
keeping pressure on the Communists for new reforms and not
demanding so much so fast that chaos ensues and crushes the
spirit of progress not only in Eastern Europe but in the Soviet
Union as well.


-- William Mader/London and Frederick Ungeheuer/Berlin