A Dash of Skepticism Wouldn’t Hurt : Soviet Bloc: Communism has a history of false-front reforms. We should wait before overturning our policy or investing heavily in unknown new faces.

While the West looks with wonder and astonishment at the ostensible breakdown of one Communist regime after another in Eastern Europe, this observer confesses to having a certain sense of unease. For all the increased openness in these countries, a great deal remains secret. And where there is secrecy, there is, perforce, uncertainty.

How much do we know, for example, about the levers of Soviet influence and control in each of these countries? We do know that Soviet forces are stationed in all of them (except Romania). We know that the armed forces and military intelligence services of each of these countries are strongly influenced and perhaps controlled by the Soviets. We know that the foreign intelligence services of the Warsaw Pact states have been de facto adjuncts of the Soviet KGB. Many, if not all of them, have had Soviet officers in strategically placed senior positions to enforce Soviet control. And all of the Warsaw Pact intelligence services continue to work with the KGB--only more intensively today--on the normal menu of activities inimical to Western security interests, from espionage to technology theft.

It is tempting to think that the fall of one Communist Party leader after another occurred as a result of a simultaneous breakdown of party authority in almost every Warsaw Pact state. Indeed, it appears that they simultaneously lost the will to maintain the existing order. But if this is so, then is it also simply a coincidence that the successor leaders all seem to have a similar reformist socialist agenda? Do we know enough to dismiss the possibility that the changes at the top of almost all of these countries may have come at the instigation of the Kremlin, and that these countries’ party leaders are simply following the party line as usual, only this time, the Gorbachev line?

Could it be possible that we are witnessing a replay of the Soviet strategy of Brest-Litovsk? That 1918 gambit, in which the Soviets temporarily gave up territory to Imperial Germany to gain time to consolidate power, has served ever since as a classic Leninist model for tactical retreat in preparation for renewed offensive.

It is argued that even if Moscow instigated the current revolution in Eastern Europe for whatever purposes, it has gotten out of control. It is said that even if the Kremlin wanted a gaggle of little Gorbachevs in East Europe, it couldn’t have wanted the crowds, the jeers, the anti-Communist placards and all the harm these things represent for the continuation of communist rule. And because it could not have wanted these crowds, it could not have predicted their emergence.

An alternative case can be made, however, that Mikhail Gorbachev and his putative East European proxies are very well aware of the attitudes of the average people. It can be argued that the Gorbachev regime has decided that honey is better than vinegar for securing these people’s support, and that rehabilitating socialism in the minds of both the alienated intelligentsia and the demoralized work force will ensure their cooperation in the perpetuation of Soviet power.

Because Gorbachev and his East European collaborators are aware of popular sentiments, manipulating the crowds may be one way of regaining support for “reformed socialism.” But this gets back to the question of whether this process of co-opting the populace can be kept under control. Can the crowds be harnessed? The conventional wisdom in the West is that they cannot. But how do we know this? What do we know about the leaders of the various opposition groups? In some countries, we know a lot; in others, very little. We must remember that for 70 years the Kremlin has been in the business of infiltrating opposition groups, even creating them, so as to control the people who would be attracted to them.

In 1984, Anatoly Golitsyn, one of the most prominent defectors ever to leave the KGB, predicted a false liberalization in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, whose reforms would be so dazzling that the West would be incapable of retaining a consensus in favor of a strong defense.

Among the scenarios Golitsyn envisioned (Gorbachev was then a faceless Politburo apparatchik ): the demolition of the Berlin Wall; a coalition government in Poland involving Solidarity and the church; Alexander Dubcek’s return to government in Czechoslovakia; a Soviet Dubcek succeeding Leonid I. Brezhnev; amnesty for dissidents and the return of exiles and a place for Andrei Sakharov in government.

A deception the magnitude of Golitsyn’s scenario is well beyond the scope of the Western imagination. But so was the deception performed by Moscow’s “trust” operation in the 1920s, which involved the creation of a false opposition and which succeeded in deceiving 11 Western intelligence agencies for several years. If we remember that thousands of Communist Party members have been part of the “people’s front” opposition groups in East Europe, the Baltic states and other Soviet republics, and that the KGB may have created or infiltrated other opposition groups, a repetition of the 1920s operation suddenly seems less unlikely.

Given how little we actually know about these possibilities, it would be wise for the West to exercise greater caution in response to the developments in Eastern Europe. We should wait and see how the chips fall before rushing headlong either toward disarmament or ill-considered financial support of any of these countries. If Eastern Europe wins genuine freedom, we can savor the victory. But if all we are seeing is a temporary, limited or false liberalization with behind-the-scenes Kremlin control, we may regret it if someday we awaken to an even greater threat, only this time with no credible deterrent to help us resist.