Eastern Europe

By Sam Allis

East Europeans use political humor to stay sane. A joke now making the rounds in coffeehouses and parlors involves a meeting of East bloc leaders to decide how to react to Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of glasnost, or openness. Recalling the Soviet invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia to stop reforms, they announce that Warsaw Pact troops are invading the Soviet Union to crush the threat to Communism posed by the radical Gorbachev regime.

If the people are laughing, many of the aging leaders of Moscow's East European satellite states are not. Most appear concerned about Gorbachev's program of economic and political reforms -- and with good reason. They realize that copying the Soviet policies would effectively repudiate their own. The men who control the six Warsaw Pact countries remember the last time such wrenching change took place in the Kremlin. In 1956, after Nikita Khrushchev denounced Stalin, unrest swept Eastern Europe. Workers rioted in Poland, and a Hungarian rebellion had to be put down by Soviet troops. Notes one Polish journalist: "Everyone just holds his breath and waits for what will happen next."

The strongest reaction to the Gorbachev moves has come in Czechoslovakia. Since Soviet troops marched into that country in 1968 to stamp out the short- lived Prague spring of liberalization, the regime of Gustav Husak, 74, has pursued policies of stolid central planning coupled with rigid political control. Now, encouraged by Gorbachev's words, reformers within the Communist Party appear to have begun a campaign against conservatives. In the process they have encouraged some public support. GORBACHEV can be seen scrawled on a number of Prague walls, and in Pilsen and Bratislava last month small groups of people waved banners declaring WE WANT GORBACHEV.

Czechoslovakia's Premier Lubomir Strougal, a longtime advocate of reform, has taken the lead in attacking orthodoxy in what Western diplomats believe is shaping up as a power struggle. Strougal recently denounced the economic policies of the Husak years, saying, "The reforms of 1968 were politically misused . . . but after that, our economy was managed with the methods of the 1950s."

East Germany has been very cool to glasnost. Party Leader Erich Honecker, 74, in a major speech last month all but ignored Gorbachev's program and noted in passing that "there are different ways of proceeding among Communist states." Honecker is so concerned about Gorbachev's reforms that the East German media have been censoring the Soviet leader's speeches. As a result, East Germans now have to tune in West German television to get full reports on Gorbachev's proposals. Honecker, though, may avoid immediate problems with Moscow because of his country's solid economic performance. "From the Soviets' point of view, East Germany is efficient, disciplined and relatively prosperous," says one Western analyst in Munich. "That's a position the Soviet Union can only envy." By contrast, Gorbachev has already chastised Bulgaria and its troubled economy. After visiting Sofia in late 1985, the Soviet leader said there were "sharp edges" to his meeting with Bulgarian Leader Todor Zhivkov. Zhivkov has since pressed, with minimal success, for economic reforms like the decentralization of economic power to factory managers.

Rumania remains fundamentally opposed to reform. More than two decades of rule by Nicolae Ceausescu, 69, has dismantled a once vigorous economy, created serious food shortages and established the most repressive police force in the Soviet bloc since Stalin. Ceausescu is adamantly against the reforms he sees in Moscow. Said he in a speech in January: "There is no way one can speak about socialist perfection and at the same time advocate so-called market socialism and free competition."

The only East bloc countries that fully support the Gorbachev policy are Hungary and Poland. For years, Hungary has been experimenting with ways of combining socialism and private enterprise and has a relatively open society. While the economy has been in a slump of late, Gorbachev liked what he saw when he visited Budapest last summer and asked for more of the same, at a faster pace. This message encourages the cadre of younger leaders awaiting the departure of Party Leader Janos Kadar, 74, who has run the country since 1956. "The feeling is that it's time for the old man to go, and some people hope pressure from Moscow will speed things along," says one Budapest editor.

Gorbachev has also been complimentary about Poland, and the feeling is reciprocated. Two weeks ago, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, 63, told a Communist Party meeting, "The current process of transformation does not lead to the dilution of socialism. Its special merit is that it prevents socialism from getting mummified or frozen. We support all that Mikhail Gorbachev does." Jaruzelski is the closest to Gorbachev in both age and outlook of any of the % Warsaw Pact leaders, and they reportedly have a warm relationship. Jaruzelski started an amnesty program for political prisoners last September, five months before the Soviets announced the release of dissidents in Moscow.

Despite Gorbachev's obvious preference for allies who think and act the way he does, he knows that he cannot impose all his initiatives on the satellites. But he can nudge them along. In the process, he may trigger an early changing of the elderly guard in Eastern Europe. Thus his message is, in effect, not simply "Do as I do," but an ultimately more demanding "Do what suits you, but make sure it works."

With reporting by Kenneth W. Banta/Warsaw