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> Rumania is delighted both with Khrushchev's fall and the prospect of keeping Red China within the pale of the Communist movement. Nikita was threatening to make things hot for independent-minded Rumanian Boss Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, whose refusal to turn his oil-rich nation into a "gas station" for Comecon threw Khrushchev's bloc-wide economic scheme out of kilter.
Since last March, Dej has been trying to avoid a complete Sino-Soviet rupture, while believing that a complete rapprochement is neither possible nor desirable. Dej wants an amorphous Communist "commonwealth" in which Peking would provide steady ideological opposition to Moscow, thus permitting individual nations like Rumania to maneuver between the two poles. To show his continued independence, Dej himself stayed away from last week's Moscow meeting, instead sent Premier Ion Gheorghe Maurer, his glad-handing traveling man.
> Poland shares the Rumanian attitude, but is more anxious than Dej to please the new Russian leadership. Party Leader Wladyslaw Gomulka allowed himself to be talked out of his misgivings over Khrushchev's fall, was quick to endorse B. & K. Gomulka wants to preserve his country's relative "Liberalism" and fears that a final split would cancel his freedom of action. The Polish public, however, fears that a détente with China might encourage the influential Stalinist elements that lurk within the Polish Communist Party.
> Hungary, where Janos Kadar enjoyed a "special relationship" with Khrushchev, has more internal freedom and more contact with the West than any bloc nation, despite the continued presence of Red Army troops. Last year some 70,000 Hungarians traveled in the West, while 200,000 Westerners-mainly Austrians, Italians and West Germans, as well as 12,000 Americans-came in and spent money. Budapest, with its fine but expensive restaurants, its Magyar beauties in beehive hairdos, its "Rockola" jukebox parlors, its elegant Hotel Gellert surrounded by Jags, Mercedes and Alfa Romeos, is by far the most European city in the bloc.
Kadar wants to keep it that way, last week struck a milestone diplomatic agreement with neighboring Austria that established a mixed commission to adjudicate border conflicts, may eventually raise the mine-strewn Iron Curtain between the two countries.
> Czechoslovakia, whose precariously balanced boss Antonin Novotny faces "elections" this month, was also tied closely to Khrushchev. Novotny failed to show at Moscow last week, sent his second-in-command, Party Secretary Jiri Hendrych, instead. At the same time, the Czechs announced sweeping economic reforms that effectively reject the Soviet system of centralized control, reoriented Czechoslovakia's lagging industry-once Eastern Europe's most advanced-along more Western lines. The profit motive is being given fuller play, and factory owners are permitted to work out their own supply-and-demand schedules.