TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/88/88capsol.1

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                                                                                September 5, 1988

EASTERN EUROPE

Young and Restless


Unafraid and impatient, a new generation demands reform--now


In the closed societies of Eastern Europe, even a modest rise
in expectations can be as explosive as leaking gas fumes. Last
week strikes, protests and demonstrations erupted in an arc of
unrest that ranged from the Soviet Union's restless Baltic
republics to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The immediate
provocation for most of the popular outbursts was worsening
economic deprivation. But on a deeper level, frustrated East
Europeans were prodded into action by Soviet Leader Mikhail
Gorbachev's tantalizing vision of a reformed and freer model of
Communism. The protests also underscored a generational shift
to younger activists, whose hopes and experiences differ
markedly from those of their elders.

Polish workers once again were at the forefront of the challenge
to the authority of nervous regimes torn between the risks of
change and the dangers of maintaining the status quo. A wave
of strikes in Poland that closed down at least 22 enterprises
employing more than 110,000 workers amounted to the most serious
outbreak of unrest in Eastern Europe since the nationwide
strikes eight years ago that gave rise to the now banned trade
union Solidarity and ended with the imposition of martial law.

From the coal mines of Silesia, where the protest began the
previous week, the strike movement last week reached the Lenin
shipyard, Solidarity's birthplace in the Baltic port of Gdansk.
For the second time in less than five months, militant young
workers hoisted scarlet-and-white SOLIDARNOSC banners across the
main entrance to the shipyard, while outside a cordon of militia
swiftly sealed off the area. From inside the gates, a familiar
face with walrus mustache addressed a crowd of cheering workers.
"The most important demand is the revival of Solidarity," said
Nobel Peace Prizewinner Lech Walesa. "It is needed in these
difficult times to fight for reforms, design them and introduce
them."

Polish workers were also demanding pay hikes of as much as 100%
to compensate for an inflation rate that has now reached 60%
annually. With a pound of butter costing half a day's wages and
the wait for an apartment in Warsaw calculated at 50 years, one
resident of the capital asked, "What are the arguments for not
going on strike?"  The workers were supported by Poland's Roman
Catholic bishops, who criticized the regime in unusually harsh
terms and called for the government to honor 1980 agreements to
recognize Solidarity.

In some ways, the strike scene was sadly familiar. Only four
months ago, during a round of nationwide walkouts by 20,000
workers, Walesa led a shutdown at the Lenin shipyard. After a
nine-day sit-in, the workers accepted a demoralizing surrender.
This time, though, the core of worker protest lay with the
nation's 450,000 coal miners in Silesia. They are the prime
motor of Poland's tottering economy, firing its aging industrial
plant and providing $1 billion in precious hard-currency
exports.

The movement spread unevenly across the country, sometimes
meeting resistance or apathy among older workers. Although
defiant young miners overturned cars in Silesia and strikers in
Gdansk changed, "Come to us, come to us," a traditional labor
call for support, the fervor that swept the nation in 1980 was
missing. Said a young doctor in Gdansk:  "People don't believe
these strikes can change much--in fact, they think they will
mainly help make things worse. There will be no coal for winter,
no this, no that."

The government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski played on such
popular fears by giving unprecedented television coverage to the
strikes. Alluding to the demand for the legalization of
Solidarity, Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban ruled out
"gun-point negotiations with strikers on political issues."  A
curfew was called in the heart of the mining-strike region near
Katowice, and others were authorized for the port cities of
Szczecin and Gdansk. After declaring the strikes illegal,
authorities accelerated trials, and jail sentences of up to
three months were imposed on charged strikers.

Jaruzelski seemed to signal a shift in mood late last week at
a special meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee, when
he called for a "brave new turn" and the courage to break
stereotypes" in dealing with worker grievances. Jaruzelski's
remarks followed a television address by General Czeslaw
Kiszczak, the Interior Minister, who offered to open talks with
representatives of "different social groups" to end the unrest.
While there was speculation that the Kiszczak statement hinted
at possible talks with Solidarity for the first time since 1981,
the offer was greeted with skepticism by Poles, who have heard
similar words before.

Meantime, government riot police stood ready to open a mine in
the Silesian town of Jastrzebie in order to permit safety crews
to combat an underground fire and relieve accumulations of
methane gas. After vowing to keep the troops from entering,
several hundred militant strikers backed down.

In countries as diverse as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary,
the new young activists are markedly different from the
generation that manned the rebellious barricades in Prague in
1968--and even from the veterans of Solidarity's struggle in
1980. "The young today diverge very strongly from my
generation," says Jacek Szymanderski, 43, a Polish historian and
formerly a leading figure in Solidarity. "They are more
sophisticated politically but less experienced. Their demands
are more ambitious, but they are also perhaps more cynical. Most
especially, they are deeply aware of human rights."  In
addition, they are the first generation of protesters to come
of age when a Soviet leader supports at least a limited degree
of reform instead of schemes to crush it.

In Prague too last week, young people made up most of the
10,000 demonstrators who spontaneously joined a march to the
city's Old Town Square on the 20th anniversary of the Soviet-led
Warsaw Pact invasion that crushed Czechoslovakia's reformist
Prague Spring. Chanting "We want freedom!" and "Russians, go
home!," the crowd surged toward the ancient royal castle now
housing the offices of the President, but were halted by the
police. Later, hundreds of riot police, equipped with tear gas
and aided by attack dogs, charged a hard core of demonstrators,
beating some of them and bundling more than 70 into vans.

It was an extraordinary display of defiance for Czechoslovakia,
where a cautious populace has not dared to mount a demonstration
against the government of even one-tenth that size since staging
enormous protests the year following the 1968 crackdown. The
numbers and fearlessness of the young demonstrators surprised
the Prague regime, which has relied on a combination of
factors--relative abundance of food, fear of losing a job,
apathy--to keep discontent in check.

In the past year, hundreds of thousands of youthful Czechs and
Slovaks have signaled their discontent by openly supporting the
Roman Catholic Church. In particular, they back Prague's
outspoken Frantisek Cardinal Tomasek, 89, who attacks the regime
for its antireligious harassment and urges the faithful to stand
up for their rights, religious and secular.

Even in Hungary, where Party Leader Karoly Grosz has endorsed
the most aggressive economic and political reform policies in
the Soviet bloc, discontent flared last week. In a protest
apparently not coordinated with Poland's unrest, a total of 450
miners at two mines near Pecs launched the first strike to be
officially acknowledged in Hungary in more than 30 years. The
miners demanded pay hikes to compensate for new taxes, which
absorb up to 60% of their salaries. The government swiftly ended
the solitary strike by agreeing to roll back new income taxes
on all bonuses.

In Moscow, meantime, the Soviet leadership was dramatically
reminded last week of the discontent of the three Soviet Baltic
republics, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, which were independent
between the two world wars. In an unusual concession to local
nationalist sentiments,officials permitted rallies marking the
49th anniversary of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin
nonaggression pact, which contained a secret protocol that paved
the way for the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states. Tens
of thousands poured into cities along the Baltic coast to
denounce the pact and thereby protest Soviet domination.

In the immediate future, though, the Poles' bitter despair and
virulent anti-Communism--as expressed in the national revulsion
for the Jaruzelski regime--pose a more serious threat to the
stability of the Soviet bloc. Although the regime may succeed
in suppressing the latest outbreak of strikes, it will be
winning only a skirmish, not the war. Unless the authorities
can manage to come to terms with their opponents, the next round
of unrest, when it comes, is likely to be more serious, fueled
again by a generation of angry young people who are more
desperate and have less to lose than their parents did.

--By Frederick Painton.  Reported by Kenneth W. Banta/Warsaw