Gorbachev Walk Stirs Mild Melee at Romania Market

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev on Wednesday ended his first visit to Romania with a three-hour tour of the capital that caused a minor melee at a food market.

Before Gorbachev boarded an Aeroflot plane for East Berlin to attend a Warsaw Pact meeting that begins today, he took one of the “walkabouts” that have become a trademark of his leadership.

Gorbachev and Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu visited a just-opened commercial agricultural complex and an attached market with fresh fruits, vegetables and meat.

As the motorcade pulled away, a crowd of hundreds of people across the street broke through plainclothes security officers and rushed over in hopes of buying some of the produce.

Frequent Food Shortages

Romania has been suffering food shortages for years, and some basic staples are rationed. Much of its agricultural production is exported to the Soviet Union in exchange for oil.

“What do you lack?” Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, asked a pair of elderly women in black kerchiefs selling cucumbers. If the women answered, their responses were lost in the crush of security officers that ringed the official foursome, which included Ceausescu’s wife, Elena.

Earlier, during a visit to the Polytechnic Institute, a large campus of 30,000 students, the Soviet leader stopped to chat with students and professors about how they lived, how their tuition was paid and about the mood of the students.

Wednesday’s modified tour was one of the few occasions in which the Soviet leader had direct contacts with working people in Romania, and even these were carefully chosen. Most of his time in Bucharest was taken up with meetings, dinners, official tours and a rally for the Communist Party elite.

Polite, Friendly

Although the crowds that lined the streets for Gorbachev were polite and friendly, there was little of the spontaneity that characterized his walkabouts in Prague and Bratislava earlier this month and in Budapest last fall.

Ceausescu and Gorbachev signed a communique calling for “respect for national independence and sovereignty” and “noninterference in domestic affairs.” Romania’s domestic and foreign policies under Ceausescu have been semiautonomous, and government leaders have shown little enthusiasm for Gorbachev’s campaign for glasnost (openness) in Soviet society.

In his only speech during the visit, Gorbachev on Tuesday talked about the need for greater openness, more democracy in the Communist Party and a shift in emphasis to the needs of the working people.

Upon arriving later Wednesday in East Berlin, the Soviet leader was greeted by a high-level delegation that included Communist leader Erich Honecker. The two men walked hand in hand at Schoenefeld Airport.