Change Won’t Be Imposed, Soviets Say : Gorbachev Reforms Draw Mixed East Bloc Reaction

On the eve of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s visit to Czechoslovakia, a Kremlin spokesman had words of reassurance Wednesday for this Communist-ruled nation: Gorbachev has no intention of imposing Moscow-style reforms on Czechoslovakia or any of the other East Bloc allies.

“We’re pretty busy doing things ourselves,” said Soviet Foreign Ministry spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov. “Of course we can have discussions, but we can’t push anybody around.”

His comments preceded Gorbachev’s first official visit to Prague, bastion of an old-line Communist regime that came to power after Soviet tanks crushed economic and political reform in what became known as the Prague Spring of 1968.

“That was 19 years ago,” Gerasimov said. “Times change.”

Times have changed indeed, and the Czechoslovak government that was put in power to crush reform has now hung a banner along the route of Gorbachev’s motorcade that reads, “Yes to the Policy of Glasnost.”

Czechoslovak leader Gustav Husak spoke warmly of economic reforms at a recent meeting of the Communist Party leadership. But government officials say few real changes can be expected until 1990 at the earliest.

And throughout the rest of the East Bloc, the reaction to the Soviet Union’s domestic reforms has been mixed. Each Eastern European country has staked out its own position on Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or openness, ranging from East Germany’s polite rejection to Poland’s enthusiastic endorsement.

On the purely personal level, the Soviet leader has captured the imaginations of many private citizens in the East Bloc.

“We like him,” said an East German tourist on Wenceslas Square, the city’s main shopping street. “We think it’s good, what he’s doing in the Soviet Union. We hope it will be that way soon with us.”

But it appears that Gorbachev is more interested in calm along the fringes of the East Bloc than he is in forcing changes on his allies at a time when he faces deep-rooted opposition to his reforms at home.

With the support of other East Bloc leaders, he will be in a better position to take on the recalcitrant layer of middle-level bureaucrats who are said to be slowing the pace of reform for fear of losing their own power, diplomats said.

Soviet Presence Not Forgotten

By the same token, turmoil caused by any new interventions abroad would distract Gorbachev from his campaign to make the Soviet society more efficient, they said.

“He’s not saying, ‘Be just like us,’ ” a Western diplomat said. “Especially in Czechoslovakia, where the economy functions better than anybody else’s except East Germany. Also, whatever the problems are, the Russians can’t invade again. They’re already here.”

That fact is lost to few in Czechoslovakia, despite the low profile kept by the estimated 100,000 Soviet troops who are stationed here in isolated bases outside the major towns. And in contrast to Prague’s public displays of warmth toward Moscow, some Czechs privately express cynicism about their leaders’ sincerity.

Meanwhile, East Germany, the most visible opponent of Soviet-style reforms, has been notably reluctant to adopt the Gorbachev model.

“We believe it would be wrong to force the Soviet system on Germany because it does not correspond to the conditions and development in Germany,” a senior East German Communist Party official said in an interview published Wednesday. Earlier, the East German press had merely summarized one of Gorbachev’s speeches before the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, in which he called for “more socialism, more democracy.”

Praise From Poland

While East German leader Erich Honecker has not said that there is anything wrong with revamping the economies of the Soviet Union or other allies, he indicated that he feels no such changes are needed in East Berlin.

“We have no reason to be silent about our achievements,” Honecker told party leaders in February.

In Poland, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, at 63 the Communist leader closest in age to the 56-year-old Gorbachev, said his government “wholeheartedly supports” the new Soviet policies, some of which Poland had put into effect before Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union.

The Polish Communist Party “strongly supports all that Mikhail Gorbachev is doing,” Jaruzelski said in a recent speech. “His energy, boldness, farsightedness deserve deep respect and our sincere Polish sympathy.”

Original Solutions

Jerzy Urban, the Polish government spokesman, recently announced sweeping economic changes designed to inject a larger element of private enterprise into the Polish economy, including replacement of top-level officials and possible establishment of a stock market.

“The direction of our reforms is convergent with that in the Soviet Union, but our solutions are original and stem from Polish conditions,” Urban said.

In Bulgaria, traditionally one of the Soviet Union’s closest allies, Gorbachev’s rise to power caused some friction in the relationship.

After a visit to the capital, Sofia, in 1985, the Soviet leader said “sharp points” had arisen in his talks. Since then, the Soviet Union has been pushing for a better trade deal with Bulgaria along the lines that Gorbachev is expected to raise in Czechoslovakia.

Following Gorbachev’s Lead

In response, Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov told his party’s central committee, “For us, a new economic, political and ideological climate is necessary, and we must create it at any cost.”

But he also defended his three decades of leadership by saying that the national income had increased eightfold since 1956.

He also spoke out against “negative phenomena,” including economic crimes ranging from short-changing shop customers to large-scale theft from state-owned factories.

Bulgaria has also followed Gorbachev’s lead in launching an anti-alcoholism campaign, but visitors to Sofia said the word seems not have filtered down to many bars and cafes, where public drunkenness is still apparent.

In Hungary, officials said the Gorbachev regime has followed the line of the changes in the Hungarian economy that Communist Party chief Janos Kadar introduced after the 1956 uprising against Soviet control.

‘Economy Is Key Issue’

Recently, Hungary has run into the problems of rising foreign debt and inflation, as have a few other Communist countries, principally Poland and Yugoslavia.

“There is no question that in the latter half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s, the advance of the socialist world system slowed down and the economic growth rate lost a part of its advantage over capitalism,” said Janos Bercy, a Hungarian Communist party official.

“Today the economy is the key issue to advancing socialism in Hungary,” Bercy said in a radio appearance. “The shift to an intensive growth orbit is vital.”

Maverick Romanian leader Nicolae Ceausescu has spoken out strongly against the need to introduce Soviet-style reforms in his country, which is one of the poorest in Europe and is plagued by food shortages and interruptions of energy supplies.

Reforms Criticized in Romania

Since Gorbachev came to power two years ago, the Romanian press has claimed that Ceausescu introduced reform to the country’s economy as early as the late 1970s.

But the Romanian leader was critical of reforms introduced in the Soviet Union, saying, “No one can conceive of a revolutionary party saying that it will let enterprises or economic sectors manage themselves and no longer interfere in the management of the enterprise or of scientific, cultural or other activities.

” . . . One cannot speak of a socialist economy and not assume the socialist ownership of the means of production as its basis.”

Here in Czechoslovakia, the leadership--in words, at least--yields to few when it comes to expressing its devotion to the Soviet Union.

New Stage, New Tasks

In his speech to the Communist Party leadership, Czech leader Husak said, “Our society has entered a new stage in which it has to face entirely new tasks and which make great demands on the whole of our party and all working people.”

“Through Soviet Experience to New Successes in Building a Developed Socialist Society in Czechoslovakia!” urges a banner hung over the Supreme Court building.

A newspaper article this week even quoted a government official as saying that the lessons of past reforms--including those of 1968--would be studied to help deal with today’s problems. Until recently, mention of the 1968 reforms in a positive context was taboo.

Prague jokesters poke fun at the paradoxical situation of a reform-minded Soviet leader coming to visit a regime that owes its existence to the Kremlin’s determination to crush the reforms of 1968.

“When the restaurant is going broke, you don’t print new menus--you change the chef,” goes one of the more printable political quips that have flooded the city in advance of Gorbachev’s arrival.

Economic Reform Favored

Other observers were even more cynical.

“Husak will support anybody on top in Moscow, but Gorbachev doesn’t know it,” said Ivan Klima, a writer who is active in the Charter 77 dissent movement.

Husak’s speech made it clear that, of Gorbachev’s three reform planks, it is perestroika , or economic reconstruction, that the Prague regime favors most.

Of the other two, demokratizatsia , or political reform, got the briefest mention.

“We will have to consider also this question,” Husak said, moving on to other matters.

As for the third reform item--glasnost--the slogan along Gorbachev’s motorcade route is the only mention of it among all the thousands of signs hoisted to greet the Soviet leader.

Renovation Urged

Written in Russian, it seems to be designed more for his consumption than for society at large. But Czech and foreign diplomats agreed that the local media have carried more information about economic problems recently than they had in the past.

Economic reform is another matter: Despite a 3.4% growth rate in 1986, planners say factories are outdated, resources are stretched to the limit and the economy cannot continue to develop without a major renovation.

“There are two main elements,” said Nikolaj Ordnung, an economist at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. “We need improved central planning to make more efficient strategic decisions . . . and we need to delegate the vast responsibilities for day-to-day decisions at the enterprise level.”

Such a move could lead to political problems by reducing the direct responsibility of the Communist Party for decision-making, problems similar to those that face Gorbachev in the Soviet Union, Ordnung acknowledged.

The economy is expected to be a major topic in the talks between Gorbachev and Husak, which were delayed three days by what the Kremlin called a cold afflicting the Soviet leader. Czech officials say the Soviets are pushing for “intensification” of the links within Comecon, the East Bloc equivalent of the European Economic Community. “Intensification” is shorthand for the Soviet Union’s getting more and better goods in return for the raw materials that it ships to Czechoslovakia.