COLUMN ONE : New Ties to the Old Country : Ethnic pride has surged among Americans of East European descent. Assistance has gone beyond financial support; some have taken jobs with the new governments.

When Madeleine Albright, a Czech-born foreign policy expert, was growing up in the United States, being an emigre from a Communist country often seemed a lonely plight. Although most did not deny their heritage, few ever bragged about it either, she recalls.

But now, with the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of communism there, Americans of East European ancestry are rushing to re-establish ties with the land of their forefathers--to provide aid and support, and sometimes to become part of the new democratic governments.

Albright, who almost certainly would have been the White House national security chief if Democrat Michael S. Dukakis had been elected in 1988, is now an influential (albeit unpaid) adviser to the newly formed government of Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel.

There are others as well:

--Peter Zwack, a naturalized American, gave up his U.S. citizenship to serve as Hungary’s ambassador to the United States for the first year of the new Budapest government’s existence. He recently was replaced after a dispute involving other top officials.

--Former Minnesota Gov. Rudy Perpich seriously considered an offer to become foreign minister of Croatia--his father’s native land--before eventually declining for fear that he might have to give up his U.S. citizenship. He intends to stay in Croatia as an adviser.

--Economist Zdenek Dravek has taken a two-year leave of absence from the World Bank to advise the new Czechoslovakian government in Prague, where he was born, on how to sell off government-owned companies to private entrepreneurs.

--UCLA computer science professor Algirdas Avizienis has moved to his native Lithuania, which he left at age 12, to become chancellor of the University of Kuanas, which has reopened after 50 years. It was closed when the Soviet Union annexed that country in 1940.

--Several wealthy East European-Americans--most notably Hungarian-born millionaire-financier George Soros--have set up special foundations to aid their native lands. Last year, Soros invested $15 million through nine such institutions that he created around the region.

--And influential East European-American lawmakers from Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) to Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) are now openly helping to plead the case for more aid and economic benefits for the countries of their ancestors.

“Rather than seeing just Red on the map of East Europe, or hearing strange names, or remembering funny stories from grandparents, people are now finding distinct identities for themselves in that region,” Albright says.

“Everyone knew I’m a Czech” before, she says, “but only now do people come up and say they are too. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Indeed, in some East European countries--whose populations often have felt ignored by the large industrial powers--significant portions of voters now believe they must rely mainly on their ex-countrymen if they want to obtain any major Western help.

From the perspective of the new democratic East European governments, obtaining help from ex-emigres isn’t the problem--it’s coping with the wave of new aid offers.

Stasys Lozoraitis, Lithuania’s charge d’affaires here, describes “an explosion of interest in Lithuania” that sometimes has proved “a little too much” for his legation to handle.

“For years it was dormant (and) Lithuanians here were just not participating, and then suddenly they found out they had feelings for Lithuania,” Lozoraitis says. “It was like coming out of the closet, a new discovery of their roots.”

Lozoraitis says he and his tiny, largely volunteer staff were “almost overwhelmed” by the offers.

When Bulgaria announced free elections last year, Bulgarian-Americans sent money and equipment to help fledgling democrats in their campaigns. The post-Communist government in Sofia reversed a 45-year-old ban by opening embassy doors here to their former countrymen.

The small Romanian-American community here in the United States, moved by stories of the recent turmoil there, raised funds and gave former King Michael a warm welcome in Chicago and several other U.S. cities as he sought support for his efforts to return home.

Hungarian-Americans in all walks of life have rushed to help the new Budapest government, many of them sending telephones, photocopiers and money for reopened church schools, libraries and opposition political parties.

One group at a Cleveland hospital even offered to send medical equipment.

In one poignant episode, the son and grandson of Osker Jaszi, a liberal Hungarian thinker who died here at the turn of the century, turned over his remains to the Hungarian Embassy for reburial in Hungary.

Some American businessmen born in East Europe are investing in their old countries--partly in anticipation of eventual profits there, but also as a result of their new-found ethnic identification and nostalgia.

Hartford, Conn., entrepreneur David T. Chase is leading a group that is investing $200 million in Polish cable television--”partly for sentimental reasons,” he insists, even though as a Jew, he was sent to a concentration camp during World War II.

In Panna Maria, Tex., a small farming community created by Polish emigres in 1854, fifth- and sixth-generation Polish-Americans have begun to visit Poland for the first time in memory. “Our Texans have decided to become Polish again,” says Father Frank Kurzaja, a local priest.

Poland’s best-known American son, former Jimmy Carter Administration National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, was even briefly considered a potential candidate in last year’s Polish elections--before he announced publicly that he would not enter the race.

“This was not a frivolous idea over there or in Brzezinski’s mind,” a friend insists. Brzezinski almost certainly would have fared better than unknown Canadian expatriate Stanislav Tyminski, who won a quarter of the vote on a platform that many considered naive.

The reasons behind the rebirth of ethnic pride among Americans of East European heritage are straightforward--and complex. After shunning the identification with the “Old Countries” for a long time, some now feel guilty about their earlier aloofness.

Still others feel they want to help those East Europeans who were not lucky enough to escape to the West.

“I have had a very good life, and I owe something back to the country I came from,” says Albright, whose father, diplomat Josef Korbel, fled the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948. “Those that stayed had it tough,” she says.

Just how tough hits home regularly when Albright meets with her friend, the new Czechoslovak ambassador here, Rita Klimova, whose life is almost a mirror-image of Albright’s.

Klimova’s mother and father emigrated in the 1930s to New York, where she completed high school. But her parents were dedicated Communists and returned to Prague with her after the democrats were ousted.

By the 1960s, disillusionment set in and they were harassed by the government. In 1968, Klimova herself was fired from her professorship at Charles University--and her son was arrested--for opposing the Soviet invasion.

For 20 years Klimova was a dissident, “lucky to be allowed to work as a translator,” she says, a New York accent still discernible in her otherwise-perfect English. “Yes, Madeleine had a better deal,” she agrees with a smile.

But not all the American emigres find that their ideas are readily accepted.

Albright found some serious differences recently when she began pressing for increased regional cooperation in Eastern Europe, only to find that long-repressed East European governments wanted to emphasize their individuality.

“I think like an American, not a Czech,” she concedes. “There’s a limit to how useful I can be to the Prague government.”

Many Americans of East European heritage have found they can help most by staying at home.

Thanks in part to Mikulski and Rostenkowski, the Bush Administration last month forgave Poland 70% of its $3.9-billion debt to the U.S. government and persuaded European governments to write off 50% of the debts that Poland owes them.

The largess was envied by Poland’s less-influential East European neighbors--and criticized by Japan as encouraging “profligate” behavior.

To Mikulski--and many other Americans of East European origin--there is no doubt at all when the new ethnic “homecoming” began: “When Lech Walesa jumped over the wall into the Gdansk shipyard, and when he won the Nobel Peace Prize (in 1983),” she says.

She argues that the region’s democratization has an enormous impact, both on Americans of East European heritage and those from other ethnic backgrounds.

The transformation brought out of the closet what Mikulski calls the “menu-ethnics”--those “who liked the food but shied away from the culture.” And it killed what Americans had come to think of as the “Polish joke”--as well as slurs against other East Europeans.

“We’ve seen the end to the bigoted, ‘dumb-Polack’ jokes,” she says, as well as to jokes about other ethnic Americans.

The East European constituency here in the United States is sizable by any measure. Census Bureau figures show that some 21 million Americans claim to be emigres from or descendants of East Europeans.

The Polish-American community is the largest and most cohesive. Chicago, its center, has the second-largest “Polish” population of any city in the world (after Warsaw). And it boasts several Polish-language newspapers and radio stations.

Hungary runs a distant second, but the Hungarian-American community--like that of Czechs and Slovaks and others--is more sharply divided by politics, economics and religion.

And lingering animosities from the old countries usually prevent the various East European communities from cooperating closely to pursue initiatives that would help the region as a whole.

But sometimes even the ethnic-Americans themselves seem confused about their origins. Albright recalls that during Havel’s visit to the United States last fall, actor Paul Newman told the new Czech president he used to think he was Hungarian, but now realizes he is Czech.

“We’ll take him,” she says, laughing, “but in fact, he’s probably Slovak.” (Hungary ruled Slovakia during the days before World War I, while Austria governed the Czech lands).