Upheaval Was Unavoidable, Gorbachev Says

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev said Saturday that the dramatic upheavals convulsing Eastern Europe now were “bound to happen” because the ruling Communist parties had largely lost the confidence of their people and could not justly claim their leading role any longer.

Gorbachev, in his frankest appraisal yet of the failings of East European socialism, told the emergency congress of East Germany’s Communist Party in a special message that “what had been accumulating for years and could not find a way out has now splashed out in a cleansing storm.”

“What has happened was bound to happen,” Gorbachev declared in a strongly worded and far-reaching assessment of the political changes under way through most of Eastern Europe. “We Soviet Communists know from our own experience that life cannot be put into the chains of dogmas.

“Lack of faith in the people and in the creative energy of the masses leads to a fall in confidence in the party and thus to the erosion of its role as a political vanguard.”

In speaking as much about mistakes as achievements, Gorbachev went beyond even his customary candor to make important points about the character of the reforms that socialism needs.

“Practice has shown more than once that socialism does not bear gaps between words and deeds and between politics and morals,” Gorbachev said. “The administrative-command system, stifling any initiative from below and drying out the sources of the people’s wisdom, is harmful for it. Lies and double morals, let alone graft and lawlessness, have always been poisonous for socialism.

“The strength of the system of social justice lies in overcoming the alienation of working people from property, from power, from culture and in establishing and constantly developing democracy.”

Gorbachev’s sharp critique of the political situation in East Germany, and by implication in other East European countries and the Soviet Union itself, appeared to be directed at several audiences with quite diverse political intentions:

-- He sought to reassure the reformers of East Germany of their Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy even while they are in the midst of ideological apostasy, turning themselves from Communists into “democratic socialists.” This is a trend, in fact, that Moscow increasingly is seeking to encourage, according to East European diplomats here.

-- He again expressed his support of the reforms now under way across most of Eastern Europe despite the upheaval they have brought and the way that they seem to have diminished Soviet influence in the region.

-- He reminded his own nation--the message was read in full on all major newscasts on Saturday evening and will be printed on Page 1 in all Sunday newspapers--of the reasons that their own reform program, perestroika, was launched. Soviet conservatives, who have questioned the need for reforms, have often looked to East Germany for proof that orthodox socialism does work and that a bit more efficiency would correct the problems here.

-- And he again warned the West that East Germany, despite the political turmoil, is not for the taking through “German reunification.” Stressing the importance of the German Democratic Republic as a separate state, and a key strategic and political ally of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev assured Berlin of Moscow’s “solidarity” in its reforms.

Alexander N. Yakovlev, a member of the Soviet Communist Party’s ruling Politburo who was in Berlin on a two-day visit last week, had discussed in detail Moscow’s serious concerns about reunification, by far the most sensitive question in Eastern Europe today, with East Germany’s new leaders, the official Soviet news agency Tass reported on Saturday.

“The political core of everything that is connected with the issue of German-German relations is in how undivided it is from the situation in Europe and the world,” Tass said, summarizing Yakovlev’s talks with Gregor Gysi, new chairman of the Communist Party; Hans Modrow, the prime minister and deputy party chairman, and Hans-Joachim Willerding, another member of the party leadership.

“Reforms that were started in the republic can stabilize relations in a broader context as well. This stabilizing role should be preserved in the future for the benefit of all Germans. The two states of one nation represent a viable alternative of development, which is open for broad cooperation and rapprochement.”

Gysi, speaking in an interview on Soviet television on Saturday evening, said that East Germany “seeks to achieve a treaty-based community with the Federal Republic (of Germany) and West Berlin” that would “ensure as many cooperative contacts in politics, economics, science and culture as possible but that should not lead to limitation on the sovereignty of the two countries.”

An arrangement that did not maintain the sovereignty of both states, such as the confederation proposed by some West Germans as a step toward full reunification, could “lead to the unacceptable destabilization of the situation in Europe,” Gysi warned.

Yakovlev had also discussed East Germany’s political and economic problems and how the Soviet Union might help. For Moscow, quite clearly, Berlin’s transition to a new and stable political system is assuming paramount importance as Eastern Europe transforms itself.

“The German Democratic Republic,” Tass said in its summary of Yakovlev’s talks, “needs to make progress in many areas--the support of the renewal by the mass of the people, the dialogue and consensus of all realistically minded and responsible forces and movements, and respect for the republic’s sovereignty.”

Gorbachev, recalling the role of Nazi Germany in World War II, praised socialist East Germany as “emerging from the flame of the anti-fascist struggle as a response to the criminal policy that had led to the national catastrophe, as the expression of the firm will and desire to prevent the threat to peace in Europe and the whole world from ever coming from Germany.”

Gorbachev, whose message was read at the East Berlin party congress, said that, “although there were mistakes in their work, two generations of Communists did not work and struggle in vain by devoting their energy and aspirations to the righteous cause.”

The forthcoming transition, Gorbachev warned, will be at once “promising, challenging and risky.”

“We understand the political responsibility that has been placed on the party’s shoulders in the current situation,” he said. “Having dissociated itself from everything that has been discarded, having radically renewed the organization from top to bottom and formulated policy objectives that are close to the masses,” he told the congress, “your party has grounds for being a vanguard force of the republic.”