ANALYSIS : E. German Rebels Lack Leaders : East Bloc: Although signs of fervent dissent are obvious, it is unclear if the activists can keep up momentum and budge the hard-line Politburo.

The East German reform movement remains without strong leaders or goals, even though mass demonstrations in Leipzig and elsewhere show that opposition to the Communist regime is mounting, diplomatic analysts agreed Tuesday.

The signs of fervent dissent are obvious: 100,000 people turning out for a weekly Monday night assembly in Leipzig; continuing candlelight vigils in East Berlin; 25,000 signatures in support of an amorphous opposition organization called New Forum.

The question, however, is whether the demonstrators can keep up their momentum and force the recalcitrant Politburo to introduce political and economic reforms it does not want.

A Western diplomat based in East Berlin noted skeptically: “The number of people coming out on the streets is remarkable. One wouldn’t have believed this just a few months ago. But can they form an effective opposition, as in Poland?”

So far, another diplomatic observer added, “There is no Lech Walesa (leader of Poland’s trade union movement), no leader with any national charisma, no tough organization like Solidarity, no one to articulate their aims. And the aims themselves are rather vague--perhaps purposely so.”

And Johannes Richter, a Leipzig minister who has been active in the reform movement, warned that “it would be a mistake to underestimate the forces of inertia and resistance to change in the East German leadership.”

Nonetheless, many observers believe that an unparalleled opportunity exists to bring change to East Germany, as the demonstrations continue to grow and the number of East Germans fleeing to the West shows no signs of ceasing.

“The root cause of the situation is that these people don’t want to live in East Germany,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington. “If you’re going to have a way of resolving the situation in the long run, there are going to have to be political and economic reforms in East Germany that will make it a more livable place for people.”

Charles William Maynes, editor of Foreign Policy magazine, agreed, saying: “One of the things that is happening in Eastern Europe is that there used to be some significant support for all of those regimes. Now I don’t think there is any.

“The prewar regimes had been so bankrupt and had led the countries into such disasters that there was a willingness on the part of a significant portion of the population to acquiesce in this new system. I think that has all been burned out. . . . East Germany does not exist except through its ideology. If the ideology collapses, the state collapses.”

Thus far, however, it has been the strategy of New Forum to couch its call for reform in general terms in order to enlist the broadest possible following. Its leadership similarly lacks specificity: Several founding members speak for the group, but there is no clearly defined hierarchy.

For the past two weeks, the focal point of New Forum activity in East Berlin has been the book-filled apartment of painter Baerbel Bohley, on a leafy street in the Prinzlauer Berg district.

Bohley is a wispy woman in her 40s who, in the eyes of many, exudes not charisma but a sort of helpless charm as she deals with phone calls and visitors and tosses out ideas about what she would like to see the government do.

She talks of engaging the state in a dialogue with the people but offers no suggestions on just how to bring this about.

In addition, she insists that New Forum wants to reform the country from within, by peaceful means, although this could be a difficult task in a Communist state with a tough, well-trained police force, a secret security apparatus and a large army.

“One of the problems of developing a hard resistance,” one observer said, “is that few people here, unlike Poland, have served prison sentences. In the past, the regime has exiled the resistance leadership.”

Indeed, a popular joke has it that East German dissidents “live in Stuttgart, drive Mercedeses and take their girlfriends to Spain on vacation.”

Dissidents have come to not fear being imprisoned, but they dread being dumped across the Berlin Wall and having their names inscribed on the immigration blacklist. And they have become more muted in their criticism of the regime than were the members of Solidarity, which recently formed the first non-Communist government in the East Bloc.

Senior members of Protestant church groups have been careful about going too far in speaking out against the regime, instead working out a modus vivendi that has allowed some dissent--but not too much.

“Churches in East Germany are much less well organized politically than in Hungary and Poland,” said Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a former State Department and National Security Council expert who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“I doubt that the church will become a focus of opposition to the present regime to the extent that it has in countries where the majority of the population is Roman Catholic. There is no good precedent for evangelical churches to engage in politics as much as the Roman Catholic Church,” Sonnenfeldt said.

Nonetheless, said one West Berliner who crosses to the East, “I have the feeling that had they maintained the pressure of those big East Berlin demonstrations the regime would have had to give in.”

He referred to the marches that erupted in East Berlin just before the arrival earlier this month of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, who was in East Berlin for celebrations marking East Germany’s 40th anniversary.

Gorbachev reportedly warned East German leader Erich Honecker against the use of excessive force in breaking up the demonstrations, because the use of such force might galvanize the resistance in a way that peaceful marches could not.

The reformers, meanwhile, are divided by sharp differences, with church groups and organizations like New Forum, Democratic Awakening and the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights all holding different views on how far they should go.

Werner Fischer, one of the Initiative’s organizers, pointed out that many dissidents are atheists and not comfortable under the church umbrella. His group, he says, has a tougher platform than the church groups--one that calls for specific changes.

For the most part, the reformers are not seeking a system of free enterprise, as are the protesters in Poland and Hungary. They are content with state socialism but want more dialogue, unrestricted travel and a free press.

Nor are they in favor of a united Germany. A member of New Forum in Dresden told an interviewer recently: “We have enough work to do to reform our society without that. Talk of reunification simply slows down what we are struggling for.”

The reformers also are not happy with the Communist regime’s acceptance of several billion dollars a year in what amounts to West German subsidies.

“It would be good to stop that,” New Forum’s Bohley said, “so that we can try to stand on our own two feet.”

If there is an advantage to having no national opposition leadership, observers say, it is that the authorities have no one to send into exile.

Still, a Western analyst in East Berlin said, “there may be strong leaders available--they may be waiting to see whether the horse is allowed to run before leaping into the saddle.”

And, a New Forum member in East Berlin concluded, “It would be pity to let all that energy and potential be dissipated. I hope the movement we are seeing doesn’t just run down. We have to keep pushing, or nothing will happen.”

Times staff writer Norman Kempster, in Washington, contributed to this story.