Eastern Europe: The Third Communism

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bold step: it scathingly denounced its own economic policies of the past 20 years. In the works was an entirely new economic model—aimed at decentralizing the economy and stimulating production through a combination of incentives and labor-force reduction. That would mean carrying workers as unemployed—anathema to Marxists. It would also be a threat to central planning. Unfortunately, old-line functionaries, anxious to preserve their jobs and perquisites, have dug in. Pointing to a modest upturn in the lagging Czech economy (the result of a peak investment cycle), the purists have stalemated a large part of the new model.

It is precisely this sort of reaction that makes long-term progress so painfully slow. To talk of "relaxations," whether in cultural or political control, or of economic or social reform, is to talk of ephemeras. Stanford's Political Scientist Robert North sees Eastern Europe dressed in motley and "faced with unraveling nationalism. Everyone is trying on new clothes now, some too big, some too small, and some coming out at the elbow." Poland, which permits great personal freedom of expression and in the arts, is currently undergoing a tight fit with religion: Catholic bishops who want to celebrate the 1,000th year of Polish Catholicism in Czestochowa this May are clashing head-on with party nationalists, who want to save the thunder for the millennium of Polish nationhood and protect the Oder-Neisse Line from West German "ecumenism" as well. As a result, Gomulka's government denied a passport to Rome for Stefan Cardinal Wyszyńiski. Hungary is Communism's least oppressive realm, yet the velvet glove of János Kaádár descended heavily last month on a handful of "collusionists" who protested a government price rise. Even in Rumania, "relaxation" is absurdly juxtaposed with remnants of tough police rule: the Securitate (secret police) assiduously tail suspect Westerners.

Still, Rumania's basically nationalist example has had a rattling effect throughout the East. COMECON has come under increasing attack from many of its members, who realize that Russia has been buying them cheap for 17 years. Since Russia supplies roughly 70% of the group's raw materials, and distances are frequently enormous (it is 2,000 miles from the Ural bauxite mines to Prague), Soviet prices are often higher than the world average.

Czechs and Poles complain in the COMECON council that they cannot get what they want in the Red Common Market, or that the goods they do get are shoddy, including East German trucks and salt-laden Soviet oil that burns out pipelines.

Some members have insisted on pre-inspection of their purchases—a shocking innovation in fraternal Communist economics. COMECON clearly needs reform, and Rumania's next target on the list of Communist sacred cows may well be the Warsaw Pact. Already, Rumania has unilaterally reduced obligatory service in its army from 24 to 16 months, and Rumanologist George Gross says it is "quite likely that the Rumanians (like the French in NATO) have balked at infringement of their sovereignty."

Despite these signs of disunity, all of the Eastern regimes are, simply, Communist. To expect them to change overnight is a daydream. But Communism itself is learning to adapt to human needs, is undergoing a