Czechs Cautious, Hungarians Enthusiastic on Troop Reduction

The Eastern European response Thursday to Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s plan for troop reductions in Warsaw Pact nations ranged from a cautious expression of “understanding” in Czechoslovakia to enthusiasm in Hungary.

Gorbachev announced Wednesday that, as part of an overall Soviet armed forces reduction of 500,000 troops in the next two years, 50,000 troops and 5,000 tanks will be withdrawn from Eastern Europe.

Western defense specialists say there are currently about 80,000 Soviet troops in Czechoslovakia, 65,000 in Hungary and 250,000 in East Germany, the countries in which Gorbachev said the troop reductions would occur. In addition, there are about 25,000 Soviet troops in Poland.

Positive Response

The unofficial and overwhelmingly positive response of Czechoslovak and Hungarian citizens was widely expected, because the Soviet troops in these countries are viewed more as an instrument of Soviet coercion than as a defense against attack from the West.

After the crushing in 1968 of widespread Czech dissidence by Soviet-led Warsaw Pact forces, four divisions of Soviet troops were permanently based in Czechoslovakia. Similarly, Soviet troops have been stationed in Hungary since the 1956 rebellion there.

Officially, the Hungarian and Czechoslovak governments’ response to Gorbachev’s pledge Thursday reflected their broader attitudes toward the extraordinary changes occurring in the Soviet Union.

The Hungarians, farther down the road toward economic and political reform than any other country in the East Bloc, were most enthusiastic.

In a front-page editorial, a leading Budapest newspaper, Nepszabadzag, called the Gorbachev announcement “a pre-Christmas gift . . . making us wish that the process would continue further and become complete. . . . We can say, with profound satisfaction, that the spirit of the East-West dialogue has come to prevail.”

Hints of a Soviet troop withdrawal have been circulating for months in Hungary, the first country in the Warsaw Pact where government officials openly discussed such a possibility. Those discussions seemed designed to indicate to the public that the government’s reform efforts were in harmony with what one businessman recently called “the prevailing winds from Moscow.”

In Czechoslovakia, the response was more circumspect by Communist standards, in keeping with the attitude of a regime installed to put down a reform movement that backed principles strikingly similar to those pushed by Gorbachev.

A statement released Thursday by the Prague government said the troop withdrawal announced by Gorbachev “will take place with the full understanding of the Czechoslovak government and will contribute to a further decrease tensions in Europe.”

Referring to Gorbachev broad program of political and economic restructuring, known as perestroika, the Czechoslovak government said the initiatives “prove that the new thinking, realism, flexibility and will to political dialogue are a firm and stable program for world socialism.”