Eastern Europe: The Third Communism

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(after the U.S., Western Europe and Russia). That grip, so rigidly imposed during Stalin's lifetime, has loosened steadily over the past decade as the Communist regimes from the Baltic to the Black Sea have slowly found maneuvering room. Writes Rumanologist George Gross in the current issue of Problems of Communism: "A future Toynbee, looking at the 1960s, may well conclude that the central event of the current decade was the disintegration of the Soviet empire. Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe is fragmenting, and this process is bound to continue."

The Rusting Curtain. The fragments of Russia's dissolving European empire present a rough-edged mosaic to Western eyes, its pieces often inconsistent with one another, all parts undeniably Communist but just as emphatically nationalistic. The 2,000,000 Westerners—tourists and businessmen—who passed through the rusting Iron Curtain last year (a 15% increase over 1964) found themselves transported, as if by time machine, into a Europe that in appearance and manner is almost prewar. Men stalk the narrow, cobbled lanes of Warsaw's "Old Town" clad in ankle-length leather overcoats. The taxi fleet of Budapest is made up largely of Russian Pobedas, whose grillwork and lumpy chassis resemble those of ancient Plymouths. In the faded plush elegance of Bucharest's Athenee Palace Hotel, violins sob Wien, Wien, Nur Du Allein with a sentimentality unmatched since Grand Hotel. More than 300,000 Westerners made Hungary their destination; there they dined on goose liver sautéed in butter at Gundel's, or listened to an Eddy Duchin-like piano at the Pipacs (pronounced Peapatch) nightclub, whose pianist resembles Peter Lorre. Some 620,000 swarmed into Czechoslovakia, to shop the ancient guild houses of Prague, one of the few cities in Europe untouched by the war, or listen to ragtime at such clubs as the Viola.

A tougher regimen greeted the 200,000 tourists who went north to Poland: the chill Baltic waters and harsh Hanseatic architecture of Sopot and Gdansk (formerly Danzig). In Warsaw, a city rebuilt after being 87% destroyed in World War II, they could bargain for paintings along the broad Nowy Swiat, drink ice-cold Wyborowa vodka at the Krokodyl, or simply stare at the Vistula when the city's drabness overcame them. Rumania stands in warm counterpoint—from the white sand beaches of Mamaia on the Black Sea, where 30 well-appointed new tourist hotels stand, to the clean, well-lighted cafés of Bucharest's Boulevard Magheru, where one can sip sweet Pinot Noir or bitter Turkish coffee. Fully 200,000 Western tourists visited Rumania last year, and a quarter as many again will go there in 1966.

Absence of Avocado. What few Westerners remarked in Eastern Europe, however, were the things that are understandably absent, or purposely hidden from view. Traffic is scant even on the main streets of a capital (Rumania's automobile population is a mere 10,000 among 19 million citizens). Khrushchevian "goulash"—the consumer goods that all Eastern European governments now crave—is evident but still in short supply. Because of economic planning that, despite reforms, is still harshly controlled from the top, there may be a glut of pineapple and an absence of avocado. Shoe prices can soar as high in Hungary as a week's wages ($33) and fall correspondingly