Czechoslovakia Clings to Hard Line on Reform : NEWS ANALYSIS

The hard-line Communist government of Czechoslovakia awoke today like the next-to-last patient in the rehabilitation ward of East Bloc socialism, with only the strait-jacket case of Nicolae Ceausescu’s Romania for company.

The official organs of this rock-ribbed bastion of Marxist orthodoxy maintained a strained silence on the stunning events of the weekend--48 hours that saw its once-reliable conservative allies in East Germany open their borders to the West and the removal in Bulgaria of Todor Zhivkov, the longest-serving Communist Party leader in Eastern Europe.

The moves have left Czechoslovakia isolated on the western flank of the Warsaw Pact alliance, with a leadership that has steadfastly resisted pressure for reform from opposition groups--and, so far, even gentle nudging from Moscow.

With the move toward reform and liberalization evidently under way in East Germany, and with Poland and Hungary trying as rapidly as possible to dismantle the Communist system, Czechoslovakia’s nearest and most important neighbors have abandoned the old-line Marxist dogma.

And now that the 78-year-old Zhivkov, an ideological first cousin to the regime here, has been forced to give way in distant Bulgaria, the pressure on the Communist leadership in Prague is mounting steadily.

In effect the last brick in Eastern Europe’s crumbling Communist wall, Czechoslovakia is where attention will now turn.

Only the Communist youth daily, Mlada Fronta, commented on the remarkable scene of East Germans flooding across the Berlin Wall into West Berlin, using mild terms of praise for the wall’s demise.

The Czechoslovak leadership clearly has been shaken. In the words of one dissident, they “looked like a collection of embalmed people” at an official party ceremony held just after the wholesale resignation of East Germany’s Politburo last week.

The party here has reacted harshly to opposition activities.Demonstrators have been met by water cannon and truncheon-wielding police. Dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was jailed for four months earlier this year, and less well known activists have served sentences of up to seven months for pressing the regime to reform.

Although these opposition activities have failed to dent the hard-line resolve of the system here, there is a growing feeling that intensified street protests could rattle the system--and perhaps dislodge it. The question is whether the opposition has the strength or the determination to step up the pressure.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has given a free hand to the satellite countries of Eastern Europe, both for reformist and conservative policies--but only as long as the policies are carried out with at least minimal order.

In Hungary and Poland, Moscow has given a green light to processes of reform that have been undertaken in an atmosphere of calm. On the other hand, the hard-line stance of East Germany was tolerated--but only until the flood of East Germans across the borders of Hungary and Czechoslovakia turned into an embarrassing international spectacle.

At that point, Gorbachev’s apparent intercession resulted in the replacement of East Germany’s aging conservative leader, Erich Honecker, by Egon Krenz, who is now presiding over the opening of the Berlin Wall.

In Bulgaria, where matters were comparatively calm, the Kremlin was clearly displeased by last summer’s disorderly departure of thousands of ethnic Turks, widely regarded as second-class citizens in Bulgaria. This foreign and domestic policy debacle seemed a demonstration of how badly Zhivkov, in power for 35 years, had fallen out of step with the new thinking in Moscow.

Romania’s autocratic leader, Ceausescu, long a maverick in the Communist world, has kept the lid nailed down so tightly that it is impossible for any serious opposition to gain enough strength to mount even a mild demonstration.

But the changes in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, and East Berlin are a warning to the Czechoslovak leaders, since both moves suggest that Moscow--in any conflict in which leaders are pushed hard either by public sentiment or forces for change inside the party--will be inclined to side with the liberals and reformers.

The Czechoslovak party leaders represent the hard-line Communists who came to power after the reformist “Prague Spring” of 1968, which ended with the intercession of Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops. The current party leader, Milos Jakes, was in charge of a massive party purge that followed.

The Czechoslovak opposition, representing organizations ranging from the veteran Charter 77 human rights group to younger groups such as the Independent Peace Assn. and the Czech Children, have staged regular street protests in recent months. But they have so far failed to ignite public demonstrations that reach much beyond their core group of supporters.

Opposition activists say that may be changing.

“The young people are more interested now in what is happening in all the countries surrounding us,” said Vaclav Maly, a priest whose political activism has resulted in the government revoking his “license” to conduct Roman Catholic services.

At the same time, the authorities here have been given some breathing room by the economy, which, although far from robust, is not in the tailspin familiar to Poles, who have dealt for years with market shortages and, more recently, with severe inflation. Czechoslovak officials often point to what they derisively call the “Polish model” as a reason to avoid political and economic changes.

The government here has ensured that most citizens have been kept content with a generally high standard of living--by East Bloc standards--market shortages that are sporadic rather than chronic and jobs with generous benefits. Most families own cars, and a high percentage of city dwellers have small weekend cabins in the country. For most Czechoslovaks, travel is possible, given a bank account with a requisite amount of foreign currency and a willingness to stand in line at banks and police stations to obtain the required exist visas. The process, though time consuming, is normally successful.

These prerequisites, accruing to the grudging but docile Czechoslovak citizen, have achieved only a reluctant and mostly soured acceptance of the system.

The generally sullen mood of the populace--and the growing restiveness of young people--evokes such an undercurrent of dissatisfaction that no member of the ruling elite, whatever the crisis, could expect any sympathy from a public that recalls Soviet tanks on the streets of Prague as a dark episode in the nation’s history.