Soviet Military Tests Brand New Positions : Kremlin: The Warsaw Pact ranks may be breaking. Suddenly a Soviet withdrawal from Eastern Europe seems a real possibility.

While President Mikhail S. Gorbachev was meeting the Pope and proposing a new human- rights accord in Rome last week, the stationing of Soviet troops in Warsaw Pact territories became a problem of paramount importance. As political earthquakes shake the Eastern countries, what place have those soldiers?

If East Germany and Czechoslovakia, following Poland and Hungary, are to have governments in which the Communist Party is represented--but with only limited power--then these countries could become politically similar to France or Italy, nations where Communists are in Parliament but not in government. Then the problem would not so much be the legal status of Soviet armed forces, but their adaptability to an entirely new situation.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces have been in Central Europe for four decades; their presence has generally enjoyed the favor of local populations. But the Soviets, even if welcomed by new governments, would find themselves in a hostile environment. Old resentments could explode in demonstrations--even in sabotage and terrorism.

Moscow appears ready to go along with internal changes in the East Bloc but there have been no hints, until now, that the Kremlin is ready to make a drastic change in the Eastern Europe-based structure of Soviet military power, such as a massive withdrawal of troops. In Vienna, at the negotiations for reduction of Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE), progress during the past weeks has been almost incredible; a draft treaty is about ready and a final document could be signed next spring. But the reductions of forces do not exceed 25% of the present Soviet deployment. Not one of the Western participants in the conference has so far dared envisage a withdrawal of Soviet troops back within the boundaries of the Soviet Union.

Yet Gorbachev, having gone so far in allowing East Bloc nations to grasp the fruits of perestroika, may indeed be prepared to go one important step further and withdraw a major part of his forces. He might decide that a radical change in relations with Western countries makes the stationing of a large number of troops, tanks, artillery and planes outside the boundaries of the Soviet Union both unnecessary and unacceptably expensive. He knows that the political costs of maintaining hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a hostile environment are huge.

But how would the Soviet military Establishment react?

The Soviet military is itself changing. There was a dramatic display of Soviet willingness to drop old secrecy habits during an extraordinary recent meeting at the Lenin Academy in Moscow. The academy is where “political officers”--guardians of military loyalty to communist doctrine--are trained.

The strategists of perestroika have apparently decided that change must penetrate domains of military policy, a bastion until now more protected than Fort Knox. “New thinking and military policy” was in fact the theme debated in the historic Columns Hall, just opposite the Kremlin, in the presence of about 1,500 participants, most of them military officers.

Surprising as it may seem, outside analysts and scholars were also there, about 20 of us from Europe and the United States. Each outsider was free to address the most delicate matters of military policy, including an eventual dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Even the withdrawal of Soviet forces from the East was explored.

However conceivable in Budapest or Warsaw, such talk is a striking novelty in the capital of the Soviet empire. A directive must have come from the leadership: Let the military discuss all issues and confront the new realities.

Soldiers are taught to resist change. Reduction of the Soviet military role in the world--especially in Eastern Europe--has to make the military Establishment uneasy. Several Western analysts have pointed out that the Warsaw Pact is an alliance that exists partly to protect members from one another. This is evident to us outsiders but it sounds new to the Soviet military. Now they must entertain the possibility of wrenching changes, in the pact’s role and in their own reason for being outside the Soviet Union. For half a century official doctrine stressed that the communist alliance is the bulwark of common defense against imperialists.

There were visible signs of perplexity among the high-ranking officers we talked to at the meeting. While the U.S. President reaffirms the American commitment to remain in force on the Continent as long as the European allies want such a force, Soviet military leaders begin to realize the far-reaching implications of new thinking in Moscow. They only begin to entertain the possibility of a withdrawal to bases within their own boundaries.

NATO leaders have for years been revising the strategic doctrine of the West. An old exercise. For the Soviets, changing doctrine is a new exercise.

Now there are opportunities that cannot be taken for granted and should not be postponed. Like the Malta meeting, frank military exchanges are worth the risk and may make possible a brave new East-West relationship.