Romania: Building Democracy Without a Legacy : Eastern Europe: Newly emancipated nations face common obstacles: shaping government, controlling the military and muting nativism.

For over a century, Romanians have looked outside, to France, Germany and, most recently, the Soviet Union for their political identity. When they looked to themselves they created authoritarian regimes; witness the fascist Iron Guard between the world wars.

The violent removal of the Ceausescu regime raises the question: Might Romania’s political future be a replay of its past? This same question can legitimately be asked of all Eastern Europe, including the Soviet Union; Romania’s condition is an extreme expression of the political situation in the region.

Consider the opposition movements. During Nicolae Ceausescu’s rule, dissident groups in Romania were isolated, few in number and only sporadically asserted themselves. Their victory over the Communist Party finds them unfamiliar with the task of governing--and equally unfamiliar with one another. While different in degree, this is exactly the problem opposition forces face in East Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. All the oppositions must create new political elites that speak a recognizable and mutually acceptable language.

The current Committee for National Salvation in Romania embraces old and young communists, students, intellectuals and “independent” movements in cities like Timisoara and Iasi. These various leadership clots must coagulate if the new regime is to be coherent and legitimate. The task of creating mutual trust within the opposition--also between it and reform elements in the Communist Party--ranks high on the political agenda.

The presence of those reform elements in the Romanian Communist Party is a major stabilizing factor in a chaotic environment. Communist leaders--Ion Iliescu, Petre Roman and Dumitru Mazilu--have worked with each other for decades. They can act as a nucleus that key figures from the rebellion can coalesce around. The question in Romania, as elsewhere, is whether these reform communists will remain acceptable to new political forces like the Group for Social Dialogue.

Another regional characteristic is the emergence of the army as a pivotal force. Military opposition to Ceausescu’s security forces earned enormous prestige. Since the army played a decisive role in bringing political change, the army becomes a crucial political force. Other armies throughout Eastern Europe will move closer to center stage in the near future. In Poland, where the head of state is Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the army has been a powerful if largely invisible political force. In Czechoslovakia, the Civic Forum’s urgent concern about the possibility of a military coup suggests that the army has emerged as a central force. Again, Romania may be seen as a dramatic example of a general phenomenon.

Watch, too, for opposition splintering. Within a week, the Committee for National Salvation split into several groups. A Christian Democratic Peasant Party has appeared, organized around Doina Cornea one of the major opposition figures during Ceausescu’s reign. Its initial statements already strike the student of modern Romanian history as all too familiar; the emphasis on Romania’s peasant character and Christian past can take several political forms, fascist included.

Western attention has so far focused almost exclusively on the sober, democratic and market-oriented movements in Eastern Europe. But each of these countries contains forces of a quite different nature. In Poland, creation of a more Catholic, nationalistic Peasant Party has gone largely unobserved. In Hungary, a rural-oriented, more nativist and even anti-Semitic political movement is a fact of current political life. In Yugoslavia, democratic movements in Slovenia, and to some extent Croatia, face a much more nativist, nationalist government in Serbia. In East Germany, anti-Semitic incidents have more than doubled during the last year and neo-Nazi groups have demonstrated in Leipzig. We may soon see the reappearance of right-wing nationalist movements in Romania.

Clashes between civic and ethnic movements in all these countries are quite likely. The actions of the highly nationalist, anti-Semitic Pamyat movement in the Soviet Union only emphasize the disturbing undertone of potential developments in Eastern Europe.

Yet nothing that has happened lately in Romania is more impressive than the public courage of its people. Otto von Bismarck is credited with having said, 100 years ago, that Romania “was a profession not a nation.” At the end of 1989, Romanians professed national heroism.

For two decades, Ceausescu’s policies humiliated, fatigued and emaciated the Romanian people. Yet they asserted their human dignity. Never before in Romanian history has there been such an act of popular self-emancipation. This act has been most violent--and costly--in Romania. But Solidarity in Poland, the New Forum in East Germany, the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia, the eco- glasnost movement in Bulgaria and Sajudis in Lithuania are all manifestations of the same citizen power.

The vocal demonstrations of Romanians in Bucharest after the Ceausescu overthrow are every bit as important as the revolution itself. They speak to a newly empowered citizenry stating the right to scrutinize leaders. One of the Committee for National Salvation’s first commitments is to hold free elections this spring, underscoring the pro-Gorbachev composition of the new leadership and reflecting a need to recognize the pivotal force of an active citizenry.

This new element in the life of Eastern Europe augurs well for the future. Free elections, a wide range of political parties and a more central role for parliaments--all require an active, articulate and tolerant citizenry if they are to be more than democratic facades for post-communist authoritarian regimes.

Like most of the countries in the area, Romania has no real democratic legacy. To this one must add the desperate economic situation. The absence of a genuine democratic experience and the presence of an economic emergency point to a possible Latin America future, perhaps like Argentina, where two opposing forces alternate in a pattern of persistent if contained instability. For a time, a welfare-oriented class supports a highly nationalist political elite with ambivalent support from the always crucial Argentine army. For the next time, a more civic-oriented middle class supports a more internationally oriented political leadership that must also respect the army’s political and institutional sensibilities. This could be the future of Romania and its neighbors.

But two crucial differences may be at work in Eastern Europe. There is a real possibility that each country will work with its neighbors to create a critical democratic mass. Each nation has provided aid and demonstrated in favor of the Romanian Revolution. All have seen the victory of democracy in one country as intimately connected with the growth of democracy in their own. And unlike Latin America, closer ties with a democratic United States carry no negative memories of political or economic interference. In the Gorbachev era, all Eastern European nations can envisage ever closer ties with a democratic Western Europe. In a post- North Atlantic Treaty Organization-Warsaw Pact world, such ties will go a long way toward guaranteeing that Eastern Europe’s future will be more than a replay of its past.