NEWS ANALYSIS : Gorbachev’s Hands-Off Policy Tested in Poland

President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s vow to let each Communist country chart its own future--his unspoken promise to make the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine a policy of the past--has been put to its toughest test yet by the decision in Poland to appoint a Solidarity leader as prime minister.

The official Soviet news media, in carefully worded reports highlighting the change in Soviet foreign policy, have consistently mirrored the Gorbachev line of tolerance and non-interference over the last several days of upheaval in Warsaw.

Two newspapers went so far as to call the end of more than 40 years of Communist rule in Poland “realistic” and “normal” because, as one acknowledged, the Polish Communist Party “has become associated with crises, collapses and lack of confidence in the future.”

The Brezhnev Doctrine stemmed from Soviet leader Leonid I. Brezhnev’s declaration in 1968, in justifying military intervention in Czechoslovakia, that the Soviet Union had a “sacred duty” to prevent other states from slipping away from socialism.

From then on, Warsaw Pact states were put on notice that they had limited sovereignty and that the Kremlin saw itself as having the right to prevent deviation from the correct Communist Party line.

Gorbachev is the first Soviet leader since Brezhnev to publicly reject such thinking. He has said repeatedly, in visits to Eastern European countries over the last two years, that there is no single true path to socialism and that each country must respond to its own particular circumstances.

But his hands-off policy was just words until a Solidarity activist, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, was nominated Saturday to be prime minister of Poland.

“A few years ago, the Soviet media certainly would have responded far more harshly to events in Poland, and we probably would have been predicting some kind of military intervention,” a Western political analyst said Monday in an interview.

Widening the Boundaries

“This time, in choosing to sit by quietly while a Solidarity-led coalition takes over the Polish government, the Soviet Union is widening the boundaries of what is acceptable. The big unanswered question now is, just where do the new boundaries lie? But for the moment it is clear that Gorbachev is so involved in difficulties at home that he doesn’t want unnecessary problems abroad.”

The Communist Party daily Pravda blamed the harshness of economic life in Poland for a loss of public faith in the Polish Communist Party.

“The country is on the threshold of hyper-inflation,” Pravda said Monday. “Endless jumps in wages, in combination with price hikes, will not accomplish anything without a noticeable boost in either production or foreign trade.”

Poland’s economic shortcomings, Pravda said, make “increasingly realistic” the idea of a new ruling coalition led by Solidarity, the free trade union movement.

‘Very Difficult Period’

“The Polish Communist Party,” Pravda said, “is living through a very difficult period, perhaps the most difficult in its history. The party needs, as never before, to consolidate its ranks. All forces interested in the reform of the party should rally around.”

The official news agency Tass, Radio Moscow and “Vremya,” the main television news program, all reported the change in the Polish government simply and in a low-key manner.

“This was a sign that the Soviet Communist Party does not want to appear to be hiding this news from the people, but nor does it want to make a big political statement about it,” the Western analyst said.

The most extensive commentary was published in Sunday’s government newspaper Izvestia, which noted, as did Pravda, that the Communist Party’s name in Poland “has become associated with crises, collapses and lack of confidence in the future.”

Adjusting to ‘New Things’

“The party has ceased to rule and, let us be honest, it has gone into a kind of opposition,” the newspaper’s Warsaw correspondent observed.

In a long profile of Mazowiecki, the correspondent said: “It is hard to write about a man who has not had the typical career of a party bureaucrat or been part of the power structure which for so long seemed unshakable. But we have to get used to new things.”

He said that the appointment of an outsider in the present circumstances was “natural,” and added that the Polish Communist Party “intends to restructure itself and work out a new program that can attract support from millions.”

But, he said, “as far as the future is concerned, it is difficult to avoid the classic expression, ‘Wait and see.’ ”