Eastern Europe

By Frederick Painton

| 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 chanted, "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 "gunpoint 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.

With reporting by Kenneth W. Banta/Warsaw