East bloc leaders hesitate to face perils of glasnost

Press, 6 August 1987, Page 16

East bloc leaders hesitate to face perils of glasnost

Robin Gedye, of the “Daily Telegraph,” On the reaction to Soviet openness;

IF THE Camelot era that is supposed to have 4 dawned over the sparkling onion domes of the Kremlin were believed in as readily in the East at it is in the West, doubtless it would not be long before the streets of some Soviet bloc capital were again filled with people willing to test the limits of Russian “democracy.” It is the endemic scepticism of East Europeans,' born of a lifetime’s experience of those limits, that now restricts their expectations and saves them from themselves. East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslavakia 1968, Poland 1956, 1970, 1976, and 1980 — nearly all of them revolts that occurred when life had begun to improve, or when raised hopes had failed to be realised. “The most perilous moment for a bad government is when it seeks to mend its ways,” prophesied de Tocqueville. Knowledge of these precedents and the historical lessons that are drawn from them should be enough to imply that whatever reforms are eventually inspired in Eastern Europe wilt be, selflimiting. "We see our greatest hopes not in Gorbachev’s intentions, but in the process that his actions may set in motion,” said a Polish underground pamphlet in. a timely warning last March. There have been too many shattering disappointments, too yawning a credibility gap between rulers and ruled for the 110 million people who live under Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe to believe that anything will truly change without revolution.

Poland is still waiting for the fulfilment of that sentence in the Yalta agreement which reads: “The Polish Provisional Government of National Unity shall be pledged to the holding of free and unfettered elections as soon as possible on the basis of universal suffrage and secret ballot.”

When the central premise of Marxism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, was unmasked in 1980 by Solidarity as the sham everyone had always suspected it to be, it was hard to see how the founder of Marxism could ever again be employed effectively to justify the communist system.

Blit of course he was. After all, there had been years of unending official mumbo jumbo telling people of the unique advances of socialism, of scentific and technological successes and of the approach of world commumism when everyone would live in a political paradise. At the same time, the populace had increasingly looked to the West as a land of plenty. For some 30 years after the 1939-45 War, Eastern Europe boasted some of the highest economic growth rates in the world, as predominantly backward lands built roads, factories and - homes. But artificially inflated economies soon brought inefficiencies and shortages. “The communist leaders came to power with nothing to guide them except the words of Karl Marx,” says Dr Heinrich Malchowski, a leading West German economist. “What they created were war economies, < which proved very effective in mobilising resources for a limited number of priorities, but were unresponsive to changing conditions. The Stalinist economic model , has proved disastrous for Eastern Europe, more dependent than the Soviet Union on trade with the West.”

A Polish official put it slightly differently: “Predictions of the collapse of socialism have replaced our prediction of the collapse of capitalism.” With the exception of Bulgaria and Hungary (with populations of under 10 million), none of the countries in this fertile agricultural belly of central Europe and the Balkans is able to feed itself. Poland, once a net exporter of grain, and Rumania, known before the war as “the breadbasket of Europe,” are ravaged by shortages which condemn their people to rationing. Czechoslovakia, whose merchants and industrialists once produced goods when “Made in Czechoslovakia” was a byword for excellence, has difficulty in meeting Western quality standards.

Hungary, once the most suc-

cessful and innovative communist economy, is racked by rising debts and falling living standards because of the failure of an ideologically hidebound Government to implement the urgent recommendations of its own economists.

Its .people, gazing down the Danube to their former imperial partner, Austria, know what they are capable of achieving and what they are missing. They can only hope that the breeze of reform from the East will at least ruffle the sails of a becalmed economy. Poland has failed to implement economic changes planned seven years ago because its bureaucrats and apparatchiks are more powerful in their indolence that the Government is in its enthusiasm for real reform.

Czechoslovakia is dragging its feet over reform because its Government is afraid that it will revive the spectre of Alexander Dubcek’s Prague Spring and because it does not know how to explain that he was right all along and the past 20 years were a mistake. Czechoslovaks can hope that Mr Gorbachev will at least shake their petrified Government out of its stupor. East Germany almost totally ignores Mr Gorbachev’s calls for reform, maintaining that its economy is already so hugely successful that it needs no changes. Rumania, whose regressive Stalinist regime is openly disparaged even by communist allies, tells its people tht they have no need of Mr Gorbachev’s reforms because they have all been implemented years ago. Bulgaria has overcome an initial reluctance to embrace the Kremlin’s recipes and is living up to its reputation of being more of a Soviet republic than a nation State by pursuing the ideals of reform like a school swot

Eastern Europe is saddled, for the most part, with gerontocracies anguished by the thought of change. They feel reform and self-criticism is tantamount to an admission that their rules have

‘The Stalinist economic model has proved disastrous for Eastern Europe’

been misguided and their policies a failure. Even if the attitudes of leaders have begun to change (Hungary has finally installed a new generation of politicians to see through the planned reforms), the battle to generate enthusiasiam and motivation among workers for the great new schemes has yet to show the slightest sign of progress. And there will be no progress until there is a genuine sign that the reforms will go some way towards dismantling the grace-and-favour traditions of the ruling communist parties. If Eastern bloc leaders truly intend to reform rather than tinker wastefully, as in the past, with intrinsically inept machinery, they must act to reduce the power of the State. And unless the totalitarian concentration of political and economic power that has, together with Marxist economics, become the prime source of social and financial injustices is expunged, none of Mr I Gorbachev’s proposals will succeed.

This devolution of power can-

not be restricted merely to individual nations, but must originate in a willingness by the Kremlin to allow its satellites more political independence. One of Moscow’s first priorities must be to end the practice of exporting cheap materials to its “colonies" while being used in return as a dumping ground for shoddy goods — a reversal of imperial logic. The knowledge that such national and international decentralisation is fundamental to the success of economic reform will either prevent the reforms being allowed to go far enough to make any difference, or (far less likely) permit them to take their natural course, despite the inevitable warnings of communist hardliners predicting uprisings and popular revolt. Either way, there is little doubt that Eastern Europe will witness another attempt at revolt before the turn of (the century. When Mr Gorbachev, if he is still in power, faces that moment, his decision will tell us all we ever needed to know about the limits of glasnost and perestroika.