WORLD, page 48There Goes the BlocWith Moscow's satellites finding their own way, a newarchitecture must be created for the heart of the Continent.But no one is sure of the blueprintBy Jill Smolowe/Reported by John Borrell/Prague and James O.Jackson/Bonn, with other bureaus
Can it really be just ten months since Hungary took its first
tentative step toward democracy by passing a law to permit the
formation of independent political parties? Last week Hungary's
largest opposition party named a candidate for November's
presidential election -- and he stands a good chance of winning.
Have only four months passed since Solidarity forces rejected
an invitation from Poland's Communist leader to join a coalition
government? Last week in Warsaw, Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard
Shevardnadze conferred with Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a
longtime Solidarity activist and the first non-Communist to head
a Soviet satellite.
And wasn't it just two weeks ago that East German President
Egon Krenz said he would not include opposition groups in a
national dialogue? Last week a member of the East German Politburo
met with the largest reform group to hear its ideas.
As an ideological earthquake rocks the Soviet empire,
fracturing the social, political and economic arrangements that
have guided East bloc relations since 1945, the first impulse is
to check its force on the Richter scale. But the next task, the
part where the debris must be cleared away and planners must
construct some thing new, has not been addressed. No one -- not
Mikhail Gorbachev, not George Bush, not any of the bloc's
reform-minded leaders -- has presented a blueprint for the future
of the Continent as a whole. Will Gorbachev's "common European
house" mean political as well as economic integration with the
West? Will the Warsaw Pact remain intact? Will the two Germanys
reunify? "Before you start taking an old structure down," says
Karel Doudera, a Czech expert on German affairs, "it is not a bad
idea to have in hand the materials for the new one. But in this
case, we don't."
Once unified by Moscow's tight grip, the countries of Eastern
Europe are breaking free unevenly. Poland and Hungary lead the way,
East Germany is groping to catch up, and Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria
and Rumania remain far behind. As the participants -- even
Gorbachev -- improvise from one day to the next, old alliances are
being strained. "Almost over night," says Adam Bromke of the Polish
Academy of Sciences, "all the rivalries and tensions in the bloc
that Communist orthodoxy had papered over for decades burst into
the open."
Shevardnadze spoke approvingly last week of the political
upheavals in Eastern Europe, maintaining that each country has
"absolute freedom of choice." But what if ethnic or nationalist
rivalries erupt? Suppose Soviet and East European notions of reform
become incompatible? What if, for instance, Hungary or Poland
should choose to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact? "We keep thinking
that Hungary, Poland and East Germany have hit the threshold of
Soviet forbearance," says David Ratford, a Soviet and East European
expert in the British Foreign Office. "We are at a loss to explain
how the threshold has been moved time and time again." The answer
is that significant reform is in the interests of the Soviet Union.
It frees Moscow from expensive policing operations and could head
off, in Eastern Europe, the sort of protests that plague many of
the Soviet republics. East Europeans are far less concerned about
a Moscow-initiated crackdown than about a heavy-handed backlash
from within the bloc. So is Mikhail Gorbachev. If Czechoslovakia
were to launch an anti-opposition campaign, warns Bromke, "it
would undermine Gorbachev's prestige at home and in the bloc and
make it more difficult for him internationally."
Perhaps Gorbachev is hoping that the East Europeans will show
him the way out of his own domestic morass. If so, he may be
disappointed. The key ingredients for change in the Communist world
are already well identified, the recipe lifted from a Western
cookbook for democracy. Separate Party from State. Add opposition
parties and free elections to State. Briskly mix in press, speech
and travel freedoms. Top with rights to assemble, strike and form
labor unions. Bake in oven turned to Free Enterprise setting. Then
hope that the inevitable spillover of chaos -- including the
inevitable hard economic times -- doesn't cause the Democracy
Souffle to fall.
The problem, of course, is that there is no fail-safe recipe
for democracy. While Hungary and Poland have successfully evicted
the old chefs from the kitchen, they are having a hard time
settling on who will help concoct a different mix. After years of
popular revolt, the Poles have installed a Solidarity-led
government, but that new leadership is brushing up against its own
lack of experience. Within the Sejm, Solidarity is having problems
enforcing party discipline. Out in the provinces, the government
is having an even tougher time persuading Communist officials to
relinquish their privileges, let alone their posts.
Moreover, the reformers must work with ingredients that have
grown stale. Every East European nation faces to some extent a
similar litany of consumer complaints: food and fuel shortages,
inadequate salaries that are declining in purchasing power, massive
budget deficits. It presumes a lot to think that East Europeans
will sit quietly through the price hikes, plant closings, job
layoffs and other austerity measures ahead. "It's a race against
time," says Dominique Moisi, deputy director of the French
Institute for International Relations. "Can the democratization of
politics beat the Third-Worldization of their economies?"
As each country sets about easing central economic controls,
new tensions appear. Since the 1950s, the Moscow-based Council for
Mutual Economic Assistance, known as Comecon, has brokered the bulk
of East bloc trade. Comecon encourages individual countries to
specialize in the manufacture of specific goods and sets production
goals to meet the bloc's needs and those of other members,
including Cuba and Viet Nam. Since all trade is accounted for in
rubles, Comecon has built a wall around itself that promotes
inefficiency and the production of shoddy goods.
Hungary and Poland, which are eager to wed their fortunes to
the prosperous economies of the West, have begun to explore
bilateral trade arrangements. Budapest, in particular, nurtures
hopes of eventually joining the European Community. That remains
years away, but a halfway step might be membership in the European
Free Trade Association, which has special tariff agreements with
the European Community. Such moves would come at the expense of
traditional Comecon commitments. Given the glue that binds Eastern
Europe -- including everything from heavily subsidized Soviet
energy supplies and raw materials to inefficient plants unable to
compete in world markets -- the dissolution of Comecon is certain
to be a slow, clumsy affair.
Prime Minister Mazowiecki has no plans to withdraw Poland from
the Warsaw Pact, and an alliance declaration in July forbade the
use of pact troops in the affairs of member nations. Still, Poland
plans to push for further bilateral assurances. The Soviets are
pressing NATO for a mutual phasing out of the Eastern and Western
military alliances, but Moscow is certain to reject individual
initiatives by pact members. As Soviet spokesman Gennadi Gerasimov
said last week, "We may witness a change of government in Warsaw
or Budapest, but international obligations do not necessarily go
away with a change of government."
Any discussion of disintegrating military alliances leads to
the question of German reunification. And that prospect will
probably keep the Poles firmly tethered to the Warsaw Pact. Polish
mistrust of the Germans cuts deep, dating back to the 13th century.
Logic dictates that Poland, repeatedly divided during the 18th and
19th centuries, should sympathize with the Germanys' desire to
reunite. But the thought of 78 million Germans under one flag next
door is enough to give even the most zealous reformer pause. "We
already detect a growth of German assertiveness," warns a leading
Polish economist. Says Bromke: "The Warsaw Pact is perhaps the best
guarantee of Poland's territorial integrity."
Though the U.S. and the Soviet Union might prefer to ignore the
issue, Europeans are more visibly concerned. "The whole question,"
warns Bromke, "could conceivably slip out of everyone's hands but
the Germans'." Czechoslovakia's Doudera puts the problem in even
starker terms. "All of Germany's neighbors have got to be against
reunification," he says. "Once East and West Germany have been
unified, what is to stop the Germans from wanting to get back all
their old lands in the east, from Pomerania to Silesia and
Sudetenland?"
East Berlin, of course, wants no part of any reunification
dialogue. For East Germany, reunification means political
obliteration. Only West Germans talk eagerly about the prospect of
regaining through peace what they lost through war. For many of
them, the question is no longer if reunification can happen; the
question is how soon. The vision is for a new Europe that extends
to the Soviet border and beyond -- with a united Germany in the
middle of the emerging entity. Says Chancellor Helmut Kohl: "If the
Germans say, `We belong together,' then no matter how long it may
take, in the end they will achieve the unity and freedom of
Germany."
Toward that end, West Germany is promoting economic
integration between the two halves of Europe. Some 3,000 Soviet
managers are currently receiving West German business training.
More over, West Germany is already the major European Community
trading partner of Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Bonn has
encouraged Hungarian reforms by extending an aid package of $526
million, and next week, when Kohl visits Warsaw, he is expected to
announce relief on $1.3 billion in old debt and a new line of
credit that could reach as high as $1.5 billion. East Germany,
which already enjoys substantial subsidies from Bonn, can expect
a similar payoff in exchange for political reforms. Last week Kohl
spoke by phone with Krenz for the first time since the East German
President assumed his new post. The conversation was an encouraging
sign that the strains between the two countries over the westward
flight of East German refugees might be easing.
The nations of Western Europe, which are pushing toward their
own economic integration in 1992, are certain to put a restraining
leash on West Germany's bolder visions. Jacques Delors, president
of the European Commission, says delicately, "We have been afraid
that West Germany would be tempted by a destiny other than the
construction of Europe." Bonn stands to benefit enormously from
Western Europe's economic integration -- and to lose much if it
overplays the reunification card. Warns Kurt Biedenkopf, a member
of the West German Bundestag: "A German economy would be part of
a European economy, and in view of the distribution of
responsibilities with in the European Community, German economic
power cannot be used for national purposes."
The current pace of change in Eastern Europe, coupled with a
global impulse toward interdependence, suggests that economic
integration between East and West is inevitable. It is easy to
imagine the formation of pan-European institutions. As those
efforts gain strength, a gradual demilitarization might follow.
"The Warsaw Pact will put more emphasis on political coordination
and less on defense and military issues," predicts a U.S. State
Department official.
Such cooperation assumes that the East European experiment will
not suffer a sudden reversal, exploding in crackdowns, nationalist
upsurges or anarchy. A return to the old orthodoxies and
iron-fisted Soviet control might follow, but in the present
climate, that is all but impossible to imagine. It is easier to
envision the emergence of army-backed dictatorships. Eastern Europe
might then revert to the fractious and divided region it has been
throughout most of its history.
If that prognosis seems too pessimistic, given the links that
have bound the East bloc for the past 40 years, a misplaced
optimism guides the scenarios that envision Western-style
capitalist democracies taking root in the ashes of the Soviet
empire. Indeed, it is not at all clear that that is what East
Europeans long for; East German opposition leaders, for instance,
have stated that they will not betray their socialist ideals. What
they and others seem to be calling for is a more humane and
compassionate system. "The reversal of the form of socialism that
has prevailed so far in Eastern Europe might actually facilitate
the rebirth of socialism in a different, more enlightened and
efficient form," says a Polish economist.
As far as relations with Moscow go, Gorbachev pointed a way
last week when, during his visit to Helsinki, he said, "For me,
Soviet-Finnish relations are a model for relations between a big
country and a little one." Such words from the leader of a
superpower that lays claim to a comprehensive nuclear arsenal and
a conventional armed force of hemispheric power may seem facile.
But in these heady days of change, it no longer seems farfetched
to imagine an Eastern Europe where Soviet domination is softened
to benign influence -- and where the West has as much influence
