EAST BLOC IN TURMOIL : Czech Premier Is His Own Man : East Bloc: Observers are surprised at how quickly Adamec has distanced himself from hard-liners.

The first clear sign that Czechoslovak Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec held views different from his other hard-line comrades came only two weeks ago in the national Parliament.

Most Western news accounts of Adamec’s speech that day focused on his confirmation of existing proposals to ease travel restrictions. But his later comments, made during a summing-up speech on the direction of government policy and calling for political and economic reform, were more significant.

Diplomats interpreted that speech as an attempt by Adamec to distance himself from other hard-liners. Few, however, could have predicted how great the distance would become in only two weeks.

Born to a miner’s family in the town of Frenstat, in the Valasske Mountains of Moravia, Adamec, 63, is a heavyset diamond in the rough whose Czech has an earthy quality but whose words carry few of the cliches that punctuate so much of his colleagues’ prose.

“He’s a rough individual who’s been through the university of life,” one diplomat said.

A Czechoslovak analyst added: “He’s a dogged-peasant type. His accent is all wrong, but there’s a certain moral, ethical thread through his speeches that appeals. He’s different than the others.”

Events appear to confirm that assessment.

A leader of the opposition Civic Forum credited Adamec personally with making the decisions to allow some Czechoslovak emigres back into the country in recent days and to free some political prisoners jailed by the hard-line regime.

“For the transition period, he can be a very important man,” the Civic Forum leader said. “But he doesn’t have too long to show results.”

A Communist Party member who knows Adamec said he had decided to embark on his present political gamble with little party support.

“Adamec is convinced he has to separate himself from the Politburo--that he must run the country on behalf of the National Front, not on behalf of the party,” this source said. The National Front is the Communist-dominated ruling group that includes other, small parties.

Adamec’s lonely road is not out of character, however. For a man who became prime minister, he has a remarkably small power base within the Communist Party.

Having spent the past 20 years in the government, rather than in the party apparatus--and nearly 17 of those years in the shadow of the country’s then-prime minister, Lubomir Strougal--Adamec had little opportunity to build a constituency.

Indeed, it was a combination of his experience and the suddenness of Strougal’s departure, rather than any formidable power base, that led to his appointment as Strougal’s successor.

In slightly more than 2 1/2 years as prime minister, he has shaped much of the country’s recent proposals for economic reform. But, because of this lack of a following, he has failed to push the proposals through a bureaucracy suspicious of ideas that call for centralized planning.

As recently as September, diplomats predicted that Adamec’s inability to work with the system might lead to his replacement.

But as events rocked the hard-line party hierarchy beginning earlier this month, he made his move. His decision to meet with members of Civic Forum last week left him almost completely isolated within a Politburo filled with hard-liners.

When former party leader Milos Jakes, his principal enemy, was toppled, he bid for the succession but was not even nominated. Adamec resigned from the Politburo last Friday but remains a caretaker prime minister.

His Politburo resignation speech to the party’s Central Committee was more of a lecture than a farewell. In it, he rejected the calls of some within the party to crush the opposition, with force if necessary, and instead called for a political solution.

“The application of extraordinary measures could bring peace into the streets for awhile,” he told them, but added that such a course also carried enormous risk.

“To chase the young generation into the arms of the opponents of socialism would be an unforgivable mistake,” he declared. “We must prevent this at all costs.”

After serving as a manual worker during World War II, Adamec entered industry in 1945 as a planner in the sales department of a state-owned enterprise in the city of Odry. He joined the Communist Party the following year.

After moving from industry in the early 1960s and taking a degree in economics from the Faculty of Economy in Prague, Adamec rose quickly through the government hierarchy, where he became first deputy prime minister to Strougal in 1969. He remained in that job for nearly 17 years before Strougal’s sudden resignation in March, 1987.