Parrying in Print

By John Kohan

Moscow chides East Germany

Careful readers of the Communist press were treated last week to a rare public airing of differences between the Soviet Union and some of its East European satellites. The display was all the more remarkable because it involved East Germany, which for 35 years has been one of Moscow's most loyal allies.

The thrusting and parrying in print began when Pravda harshly criticized a West German decision to lend $330 million to ease East Germany's pressing foreign debt. At the same time, East Germany had agreed to lift some travel restrictions between the two countries. The Soviet commentary accused Bonn of using "economic levers and political contacts" to "impose its dominance and encourage a chauvinistic spirit" in East Germany. The East German Communist party daily Neues Deutschland called attention to the criticism by publishing the full text of the Pravda article. Two days later, the East German paper countered by reprinting a Hungarian commentary praising East German foreign policy. Then, in an editorial last week, Neues Deutschland pointedly upheld the idea of "dialogue between states of different social orders, as well as between member states of the Warsaw Pact and NATO."

In the months since NATO began to deploy new intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Western Europe, the Soviets have tried hard to discourage such dialogue. But East Germany has paid little heed. In a clear effort to preserve its close and lucrative ties with West Germany, it has allowed 27,000 East Germans to move to West Germany so far this year, nearly three times as many as in all of 1983. Communist Party Leader Erich Honecker has also proceeded with plans to visit West Germany next month, and will be the first East German leader ever to do so. East Germany's desire to maintain its relations with the West in spite of the Soviet-U.S. chill is shared in varying degrees by Hungary, which argued in favor of better economic relations with the West at the Soviet-bloc economic summit in Moscow last June, and Rumania, which did not follow the Soviet boycott of the Los Angeles Olympics.

The Soviets responded last week with a second blast in Pravda. The paper warned that West Germany was trying to deceive the East with talk of "a special mission of both German states to 'limit the damage' done by the new round of the arms race in Europe." East Germans recognized the placement of those three words in quotes as a pointed criticism of Honecker, who used the phrase in a speech last fall about the NATO deployment.

The Soviets have been unrelentingly critical of West Germany in the aftermath of the deployment. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko coldly rebuffed West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's call for a return to arms talks during a meeting in Moscow last May. Since then the Soviet press has continued to vilify West Germany as the Third Reich reincarnate, publishing cartoons that depict members of the Kohl government with goose-stepping Nazi troopers.

West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl last week dismissed the Soviet campaign as "completely absurd defamation." Officials in Bonn say the blasts from Moscow will in no way affect the Honecker visit. The Soviet attacks may reflect the Kremlin's desire, as a Soviet official put it to a West German diplomat in Moscow recently, "to treat the West Germans the same way we treat the Americans." But they also give voice to deep-rooted fears that Germany will one day be reunited and become hostile to the Soviet Union. Said a Western diplomat: "They are putting down a marker to remind the Germans of who they really are and who lost the war.'' --By John Kohan. Reported by Gary Lee/Bonn

With reporting by Gary Lee