EASTERN EUROPE A SULLEN YEARNING FOR HIGHER LIVING STANDARDS

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32587, 22 April 1971, Page 12

EASTERN EUROPE A SULLEN YEARNING FOR HIGHER LIVING STANDARDS

(By

KENNETH D. HUSZAR

and BRUCE VAN VOORST, Newsweek Feature Service)

WARSAW.—WeII-meaning Westerners still see the citizens ofEastern Europe as imprisoned peoples sullenly yearning for freedom. That may be true for a minority in the Soviet bloc, but events have made it clear that what most East Europeans sullenly yearn for these days is not Western-style freedom but Western-style living standards.

After a quarter-century under communism, the populace can no longer be put off with promises of a socialist utopia—nor are they willing to accept economic setbacks, even temporary ones.

“It’s just absurd,” says an East German after a winter in which electricity was in short supply and some areas reintroduced meat rationing. “Why should we keep on accepting all this after we’ve worked so hard and so long?” “I was willing to take it for a while,” complains a Leipzig school teacher, “but now it seems to have lost any sense.”

“I’ve got nothing against building socialism,” says an East Berlin housewife, “but do they have to do it all in my lifetime.”

Successful revolt Last December, angry Polish workers staged what one Communist official termed “the first successful workers’ revolt in a socialist state”—and the revolt had little, if anything, to do with the kind of freedoms that concern Westerners.

In large part, the outbreaks were protests against government wage policies, but they also directed attention to the need for higher living standards—and for the reforms in government which, Poles are convinced, could produce such standards.

It is, of course, too early to determine whether the change in party leadership will bring positive results in Poland. But if it accomplished nothing else, the Polish December alerted officials throughout the Soviet bloc that something had to be done to make life a little pleasanter. For a while, in fact, scarce consumer goods began to pop up in shops and markets all around Eastern Europe. There was, for example, fresh fruit and meat in unprecedented amounts in Bulgaria. Rumanian shoppers got a bonus of 40 tons of Israeli frozen turkey and a large stock of cosmetics.

East German leaders announced price cuts averaging 20 per cent in clothes and appliances. Bananas appeared in Bucharest for only the second time since World War

Return to reality

But the old governmental habits proved hard to break. Predictably, as the Polish uprisings faded into perspective, promises once again gave way to reality. Food stocks diminished. East Germany’s price cuts disappeared, and bananas became just another Bucharest memory. (Not even a pleasant one in many cases because Rumanians, unaccustomed to bananas, had eaten them green.)

An economy of scarcity is of course, nothing the Communist leaders would willingly choose for their countrymen. But given the priorities (heavy industry before consumer goods) and most immovable bureaucracy in the world, things just do not seem to get done properly. Everyday life is a round of unnecessary bungling and red tape. In Bulgaria, it takes two days to mail an overseas package. The sender brings it unwrapped to the post office where it is inspected, tagged and then wrapped in burlap with a white string (no other colour acceptable). He leaves it overnight, then returns next day to pay the postage. Shops in Bucharest still operate under an outlandish system in which a customer is forced to stand in three different lines. First he queues up to select his purchase, then goes to the cashier’s line to pay for it and finally returns to the first line to present his “paid” stub and collect his merchandise.

Incentive wage systems for Czechoslovak and Polish factory workers have not worked either. In some cases they have resulted in general salary cuts; in others the regulations have been so complex and murkily worded that the workers have simply refused to trust them.

Housing a goad

Housing or the lack of it is another constant goad across Eastern Europe. Even in Czechoslovakia and East Germany, historically the most advanced of the Soviet bloc countries, the showy 10 and 12-storey high rises consist of very small rooms and very unreliable elevator service. In Poland, more than half a million persons have paid 20 per cent down on a cooperative housing programme. But the waiting time for moving in is nine years. All the regimes have made special efforts to provide television sets and refrigerators on a mass scale. But new furniture is hard to come by and is expensive if not exclusive. Bulgarian stores sell only one standard set of liv-ing-room furniture in three colour choices. Education in most countries leads to better jobs,

but in East Europe there is a sort of limbo period which almost seems to have been conceived in order to dampen the financial hopes of university graduates. This period is called “initial work,” it lasts three years and it is marked by the lowe.i pay scales the regimes can get away with. There are even signs that in some East European countries the socialist emphasis on education is a fraud. One Bulgarian economic specialist published tables showing that his country spends a smaller percentage of its gross national income on education (0.5 per cent) than either Greece (1.6 per cent) or Turkey (2.5 per cent). On the other hand, East Germany at 5.9 per cent exceeds Great Britain’s 4.3 per cent. Advances in Hungary Yet there is one East European country in which the population seems reasonably content with the state of the economy. Three years ago, the Hungarians began their “New Economic Mechanism” (N.E.M.), the area’s most advanced economic reform plan. Though the rights now granted individual enterprises in Hungary are taken for granted in the West, they are unprecedented in Soviet block countries. These include the privilege of adapting production directly to market conditions (as the factory managers see them) and direct negotiations with customers, even those in the West In fact, N.E.M.’s key achievement is to remove economic decision - making powers from party bureaucrats and give them to the men (not necessarily even party members) in charge of the enterprise. These reforms have been coupled with real pocketbook incentives for workers and a notable rise in consumer products. There is, thus, less absenteeism and more hard work done in Hungary at the present time than anywhere else in the Soviet block.

But contemporary Hungary is something of an accident in the Soviet block. It is unique in combining the two factors necessary for ongoing reform: an innovative government and Russian support. Nowhere else in the area have the Soviets permitted real reform. Previous efforts, in Hungary itself in 1956 and

in Czechoslovakia in 1968, were put down by an invad-. ing army. Indeed, it is probably the fact that the present Hungarian government was' installed by the Soviet Armywhich accounts for the trust the Russians now put in itZ But whether Russia can continue to hold the line elsewhere in East Europe is becoming increasingly doubtful. Communism’s most renowned dissenter, Jugoslav writer Milovan Djilas, thinks the changes are inevitable. “The choice,” Djilas said recently, “is to permit reform or be overthrown."