Eastern Europe Uncharted Waters

By Jill Smolowe

Only Mikhail Gorbachev and Mieczyslaw Rakowski know precisely what was said during their 40-minute telephone conversation. But the gist of the Soviet leader's advice to the Polish Communist Party chief last Tuesday apparently came down to this: Go with the flow. Within hours the Communists' belligerent demands for a greater role in Warsaw's as yet unformed government were replaced by conciliatory calls for "partner-like cooperation" with Solidarity. The arduous and uncharted process of piecing together the East bloc's first non-Communist government was back on track.

Extraordinary? Yes. Unexpected? Hardly. These days, events in Eastern Europe are so topsy-turvy that bloc uniformity seems to have given way to a breathless rush of uneven developments. In Hungary, where a multiparty system is in the works, Communist Party chief Karoly Grosz reportedly announced that < he was prepared to step down, a move that was interpreted as a victory for reformers. In East Germany the government sought to rid itself of malcontents by handing out unprecedented numbers of exit permits, while thousands of other unhappy citizens simply fled over the Hungarian border. In Poland the Communist Party Politburo marked the 50th anniversary of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact -- whose secret protocols resulted in the partition of Poland at the onset of World War II -- by denouncing the agreement as a violation of "sanctified moral norms of international coexistence." Lest anyone miss the point, Polish opposition leader Lech Walesa spelled it out in an interview with an Italian newspaper: "We are setting out . . . to return to the prewar situation when Poland was a capitalist country."

But Czechoslovakia offered a stubborn reminder of the old-style inflexibility. To commemorate the 21st anniversary of the Soviet invasion, the government of Milos Jakes ordered riot police to scare off some 3,000 demonstrators who had taken to the streets of Prague. Wielding truncheons, the police arrested several hundred protesters, including some from Hungary and Poland. Warned the party-owned afternoon daily Veerni Praha: "History cannot be changed. It is necessary to know it and take a lesson."

Energized and emboldened by Gorbachev's daring reform campaign, many East Europeans are setting out to draw new conclusions from old lessons. If most Communist countries share a perception of the political and economic forces that have brought them to this juncture, they lack a common vision of where they are going. Acknowledged Solidarity leader Lech Walesa: "Nobody has previously taken the road that leads from socialism to capitalism." Poland and Hungary are pressing ahead with sweeping reforms that promise to disprove the theory that totalitarian regimes cannot change. Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Bulgaria tinker with old formulas in hopes they can stave off a reckoning with the new. Only Rumania, under the tyrannosaurus-like leadership of Nicolae Ceausescu, stubbornly pursues the Stalinist agenda without obstruction. As each country feels its way through this difficult period, the competing ambitions are putting considerable strain on the bloc.

The greatest rending is in Poland, where Solidarity is now officially leading the way toward a new and uncertain future. Last week the lower house of the National Assembly, by a vote of 378 to 4, elected Solidarity's Tadeusz Mazowiecki to be the East bloc's first non-Communist Prime Minister. The vote followed by six days the resignation of President Wojciech Jaruzelski's handpicked candidate, Czeslaw Kiszczak, who was unable to form a government after two former Communist allies, the United Peasants' Alliance and the Democratic Party, threw their support to Solidarity.

In his acceptance speech, Mazowiecki sought to play down the differences that had complicated Poland's political progress. "I want to form a government able to act for the good of society," he said from the oak podium of the Sejm. "I want it to be a coalition government for the thorough reform of the state. Such a task can be undertaken only with the cooperation of all forces represented in Parliament." Ironically, Kiszczak had delivered a virtually identical acceptance speech barely three weeks earlier. The difference was that Mazowiecki has the popular legitimacy that Kiszczak, who as Interior Minister managed the 1981 crackdown on Solidarity, so conspicuously lacked.

Mazowiecki, who is expected to form a Cabinet by the end of this week if battles over portfolios can be settled, also addressed some of the enormous challenges ahead. Recognizing that Poland's bankrupt economy, not the Communists, poses the gravest danger ahead, he asserted that "Poland cannot afford ideological experiments anymore" and promised to resurrect a market economy. He also pledged a return to a legal system that guarantees individual rights. Mindful of his audience in Moscow, he promised to support existing international treaties and obligations, making a special point of referring to the military arrangements within the East bloc. "We understand the importance of our Warsaw Pact obligations," he said. "The government I form will respect this pact."

Perhaps he need not have tried so hard. Though Moscow would clearly have preferred a Communist government, the Kremlin chose not to make matters worse. The Soviet media treated Mazowiecki's election with as much interest as a report on a new sausage shortage in Moscow. But while Moscow was unusually open-minded about changes in Poland, the Communist Party Central Committee issued a shrill warning to the Baltic republics that it would not tolerate separatist talk at home.

Poland's promising though fitful progress, coupled with tacit approval from Moscow, has raised the hopes of millions of East Europeans. In countries where the leaders are proceeding at a far more cautious pace, these hopes have < spawned an impatience that can be measured by the rising tide of refugees. Hungary's decision four months ago to dismantle the barbed-wire fences along its border with Austria has uncorked the largest flood of cross-border escapes since the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961. The number of escapees is topping 200 a day, and tens of thousands are applying to leave legally. If the flood continues, close to 100,000 East Germans will cross to the West this year.

The refugees testify to a disillusionment with the rigid rule of East German President Erich Honecker, 77, who seems to offer no hope of future change. Most of them are young people, skilled workers or university-trained specialists. As yet, Honecker has done nothing to stanch the flow. One joke making the rounds last week asked, "Why will Honecker abolish East German identity cards by 1990?" The answer: "Because by then, Honecker will be personally acquainted with all the remaining citizens."

The mass exodus is no joke. In the past, the trickle of legal refugees primarily involved senior citizens, which was East Germany's way of palming off some of its pension burden on the capitalist West. But the loss of so many young professionals presents East Germany with the prospect of a serious brain drain.

The tide is also no laughing matter in West Germany. In keeping with its constitutional commitment to a united Germany, Bonn regards the refugees as citizens of the Federal Republic with full rights. Upon arrival, they receive $100, and within days they begin receiving unemployment benefits. West German citizens, who already must contend with a huge influx of ethnic German immigrants from Poland and the Soviet Union, are growing resentful of the refugee burden, which gluts the job market and strains housing resources. "The East German leadership carries exclusive responsibility for the situation," Chancellor Helmut Kohl charged last week. "We will not let them evade this."

Refugees also continue to pour out of Bulgaria; more than 312,000 ethnic Turks have fled over the past three months. With hundreds of thousands more refugees expected, the Turkish government reached the limits of its patience last week and closed the frontier to refugees not carrying visas. At 3:26 a.m. Tuesday, a train packed with ethnic Turks pulled into the Kapikule railway station, across the border from Bulgaria. At 6:10 a.m. the train began to move -- but in the wrong direction. Young refugees jumped from the windows and flung themselves on the tracks. Finally, at 8:54 a.m., the refugees were granted asylum. But that human cargo -- dubbed the Train of Shame by the Turkish press -- may be the last for some time to come.

It is not certain that Eastern Europe will ever regain cohesion. Radical reform and conservative intransigence make uncomfortable bloc fellows. Comecon, the alliance's economic union, is crumbling as members scramble to cut separate deals with the West. And the allies are at one another's throats: the Czechs and Rumanians denounce the Polish reformers for sowing chaos, the Poles denounce the Czechs for trampling human rights, the Hungarians denounce the Rumanians for mistreating their Hungarian minority. Gorbachev's phone conversation with Rakowski last week suggests that the Soviet leader finds better promise in an uncharted future than in a failed past. But if Eastern Europe's summer of hope gives way to a winter of discontent, Gorbachev's go- with-the-flow optimism may bump up against an iceberg or two.

With reporting by John Borrell/Warsaw and James O. Jackson/Bonn