Tale of Two Emerging Eastern Europes: One Democratic, the Other Totalitarian : Balkans: The new regimes in Romania, Bulgaria look and act a lot like the old--and Western governments should not reward them with aid.

The contested elections, the first in 50 years, in most of Eastern Europe during the past two months indicate that the “road to Europe” and to democracy will be neither easy nor certain. The socialist camp has already split into two groups with starkly conflicting visions.

In central Eastern Europe, the trend toward democracy and a market economy seems firmly established. In Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and East Germany, democratically elected governments are replacing the old political systems with market reforms. Croatia and Slovenia, the Yugoslav republics that have opted for democracy and free enterprise, are following a similar path away from the mess called socialism. The transition is hardly smooth, but there is no turning back.

In the Balkan region, the situation is quite different. Six months after dictators Nikolae Ceausescu and Todor Zhivkov were overthrown, skillfully manipulated “free” elections legitimized continuing communist domination of Romania and Bulgaria. The ruling Communist Party in Serbia refuses to allow free elections.

Despite their encomiums to democracy, the new regimes are uncannily similar to what they claim to have destroyed. The majority of members in the Romanian National Salvation Front are former Communist Party functionaries who made their careers carrying out Ceausescu’s reign of terror. In Bulgaria, the leadership of the recently renamed Communist Party, except for Zhivkov and a half-dozen of his cronies, is virtually identical to the corrupt clique that drove the country into the ground politically and economically.

Not surprisingly, the totalitarian structures by which the former regimes held power remain intact. Glasnost is more or less observed. But Romania’s dreaded Securitate has reappeared and already served its new masters with distinction by inciting and directing a pro-government mob into an orgy of violence against the opposition. As under Ceausescu, Securitate officers--400 have been identified--dominate foreign trade and other institutions in Romania. In Bulgaria, the no less feared Darzhavna Sigurnost carries on its terrorist activities, drug trafficking and murder without the slightest interference from the new government.

The two regimes have yet to abandon another favorite policy of their predecessors--stirring up ethnic hatred. They are, to be sure, more circumspect about it, but evidence is building that the governments inspire and support such chauvinistic parties as the Vatra Romaneasca and the Bulgarian Committee for Defense of the National Interests, which spew hate against Hungarians, Turks and other minorities. In Bulgaria, the leaders have invented a Turkish military threat to justify the militarization of society and their privileged positions.

Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic has tried to arouse popular support by spearheading an anti-Albanian campaign. Most troubling, he has raised the specter of fratricidal strife by implying that Serbia harbors territorial ambitions in other republics should Yugoslavia fragment.

Does all this mean the Balkans remain mired in neo-communist dictatorships? Yes, but not for long. The ardent hopes of Romanians, Bulgarians and others for democracy have again been kidnaped by cynical Marxists in democratic clothes. But history cannot be stopped. Communism in Southeastern Europe will wind up on the proverbial dust heap just as surely as it has elsewhere in Eastern Europe. People who have glimpsed a bit of light and shed some of their paralyzing fear can not forever be intimidated.

These regimes do not have much hope of bridging the gulf that separates them from the people and establishing some sort of political legitimacy. Greater polarization is certain, making violence increasingly probable. The day after the elections in Bulgaria, hundreds of thousands of anti-communist demonstrators in Sofia and across the country called the victors “thieves, mafia, murderers.”

What makes violence even more likely is the desperate economic straits Bulgaria and Romania find themselves in. Both are close to economic collapse. Yet the vested interests of the nomenklatura demand that real reform be sabotaged--a recipe for continuing deterioration. By winter, expect large-scale strikes, food riots and civil strife in both countries.

The neo-communists’ only hope of staving off economic disaster, and so staying in power, is sustained Western largess. Actually, their strategy for political survival is based on attracting Western aid by persuading their potential benefactors that they are true reformers. Bulgarian party boss Alexander Lilov, for example, claims that his party wants to build a “regulated market economy,” while preserving a “classical Marxist ideology.”

This strategy probably won’t work for long. After numerous unhappy experiences with lending money to totalitarians, Western governments and bankers know, in the absence of real political change and radical economic restructuring, that the money will be wasted or stolen by corrupt bureaucracies. Worse, the aid prolongs the suffering of the people. The prompt Western reaction to the brutal suppression of the opposition by Ion Iliescu’s regime--suspension of pending economic agreements with Romania--indicates the West will be harder to hoodwink this time.

An uncompromising Western demand that the last islands of Leninism in Eastern Europe transform themselves or receive no economic aid will hasten their realization that the neo-totalitarian cause is an anachronism and its believers must leave the stage peacefully. Short of that, they face a violent day of reckoning.