East Europe Hopeful Gorbachev Will Be Somewhat Progressive

If Eastern Europe had a voice in choosing the new leader of its dominant neighbor, the Soviet Union, it would most likely have picked the man the Kremlin chose--Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

There are few, if any, people in Eastern Europe who harbor illusions that the new general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party is a closet liberal, secretly straining to loosen the reins of political control or willing to tolerate the flowering of dissent.

Among ordinary Poles--and almost certainly among Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Bulgarian and other East European workers--there is a widespread feeling that one Soviet leader is indistinguishable from another, that this third Kremlin succession in less than three years will make no more difference in their lives than the last two.

However, among intellectuals and the managers of Eastern Europe’s Communist regimes, Gorbachev is widely thought to be the one Kremlin leader most likely to understand the need for modernizing the Soviet economy, for loosening the dead hand of ideology and the stranglehold of the central bureaucracy on the country’s backward farms and inefficient factories.

If Gorbachev is able to promote the gradual decentralization of the Soviet economy that many believe he favors, it is assumed that the six nations of Moscow’s East European empire will also find it easier to gradually shift toward the kind of semi-market economy that has given Hungary the highest standard of living and the lowest level of popular discontent in Communist Eastern Europe.

Few people hold any hope for revolutionary change, but many believe that Gorbachev is the Soviet figure most likely to look favorably on evolution in Eastern Europe toward something more closely resembling the freedoms Westerners enjoy, so long as it does not threaten Moscow’s concept of security.

Over a period of years, this reasoning goes, only a relaxation of economic controls can reverse the stagnation or decline in standards of living that currently afflict most of Eastern Europe. It is hoped that this in turn would permit a gradual loosening of political controls--allowing greater freedom to travel, perhaps, or wider latitude to criticize official policies, or a measure of rapprochement between East Germany and West Germany.

Risks of Wishful Thinking

While Eastern Europeans are keenly conscious of the risks of wishful thinking, Gorbachev is regarded as the one contender for power in the Soviet Union who combined a supple mind and a sophisticated education--he is a law graduate of Moscow State University--with eyewitness familiarity with the astonishing power of a Western economy.

For example, as the Politburo’s expert on agriculture, the Soviet economy’s Achilles heel, Gorbachev visited Canada in May, 1983. He seemed deeply impressed by the ability of Canadian farmers to grow so much grain on such vast sweeps of land in such a familiar climate with so little manpower.

At one large wheat farm in the Canadian grain belt, according to diplomatic sources, Gorbachev questioned the owner closely on how many people he employed on an acreage that, in the Soviet Union, would occupy scores, if not hundreds, of collective farmers.

“Just me and the wife and a hired hand from town,” came the laconic reply.

Gorbachev insisted that he did not want to know how many people lived on the farm, but how many worked it.

“Just me and the wife and a hired hand from town,” the puzzled farmer repeated.

Checking on Store

At another point, Gorbachev is said to have ordered his entourage to stop in a small Canadian town so that he could check to see whether the local store really contained all the convenience foods and other consumer goods that seemed so plentiful in Western countries yet were unavailable at home. It did.

Even if these experiences nourished the reformist spirit that Gorbachev is thought to harbor, East European observers recognize that powerful forces exist in the Soviet Union, as well as in the conservative Communist regimes of Eastern Europe, to restrain the urge to abandon the Stalinist style of centrally directed economies.

“Too many times,” a middle-aged Polish journalist said, “new people, who didn’t necessarily grow up in a revolutionary Marxist atmosphere, have failed to live up to my expectations for change. When you climb the mountain of power in our societies, by the time you reach the top, you are like the ones who have come before you.

“Yet, in such a system,” he added, “there are possibilities for one person to exert his will.”

Cautionary Tale

Any would-be reformer of the Soviet economy, Eastern Europeans are quick to point out, will regard the fate of Nikita S. Khrushchev as a cautionary tale. Khrushchev’s radical reorganizations of the Soviet economy in the 1950s and early 1960s, which threatened the prerogatives of the bureaucracy and a cut in resources for the military, in 1964 brought his overthrow and replacement with the colorless conservatism of Leonid I. Brezhnev.

While no Soviet leader can reach beyond the government apparatus for popular support, some observers believe that Gorbachev’s best chance for advancing the cause of economic reforms may lie, ironically, in an alliance with the military.

“I tend to believe the most ‘progressive’ forces in the Soviet Union are among the military. They probably understand better than anyone how the technological gap with the West is widening,” a second Polish commentator said privately, expressing a hope that is far from unique.

“If Gorbachev is smart enough to play on their support, he may use the military as a counterbalance to conservative forces in the (civilian) bureaucracy.

“The puzzle for Gorbachev will be to guess how many people among those who rule Russia think as he apparently does. If he guesses right, he may be able to encourage them to step forward. And perhaps the military will be among the first.

Long, Undistinguished

“None of this means that any remarkable change will occur in the next three to five years,” the second journalist added in a conversation late Monday.

In the background, the evening television news droned through a ritualistic recitation of Konstantin Ustinovich Chernenko’s long and undistinguished career. There was no official Polish commentary on the Soviet succession and it was 15 minutes into the broadcast, after reports of shock and grief from around Eastern Europe, before the announcer disclosed that Gorbachev had been named the new leader of the Soviet Communist Party.

Over a period of decades, the journalist went on, it is possible to measure real if limited progress in Poland toward the kinds of freedom that Westerners take for granted.

“If someone told me in 1952 that I could someday host an American journalist in my apartment, travel abroad, and talk rather freely on the telephone, I would have said this was a mad prediction. But it happened.

“Poland can’t continue down this path forever,” she said. “But perhaps in time, if economic conditions improve, some of our more retarded neighbors--Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, even Romania--will begin to catch up with us.”