THE PULSE OF EUROPE : On Welfare : Citizens Still Want State to Take Big Role : * Democratic socialism, not capitalism, is the likely model for the East’s future.

Pierre Garenne, a 33-year-old pastry chef, worries that the generous French welfare system may weigh his country down when it competes in the streamlined European Community after 1992.

Yet, Garenne does not want French benefits reduced too much in order to restore a competitive edge. “What frightens me,” he said, “is that we might fall into the American system afterward. Of that, I’m afraid.”

Garenne, sitting with his wife in the apartment behind their pastry shop in this little Picardy town, explained politely to the family’s American guests that he believes the United States, under its social system, does not take care of its people.

“That American social system appalls me a little,” he went on. “I think we ought to do somewhat less in France, but the United States should do more.”

These words spoken in rural France underscore a central fact about this Continent: The welfare state, a form of democratic socialism, has taken strong hold in Western Europe and is likely to serve as the model for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as these countries transform their Communist economies. The American model--a largely unregulated capitalistic system with fewer welfare benefits than offered by its European allies--will probably not suffice.

Asked to choose whether it is more important that everyone be free to pursue their life’s goals without interference from the state or whether it is more important that the state play an active role in society so as to guarantee that nobody is in need, a majority of Americans chose the first concept. But every West European people except western Germans, and every East European country except Czechoslovakia, rejected the American priority in a Times Mirror survey across the Continent.

The survey made clear several other, related attitudes:

* While Russians like the idea of a free market, they are suspicious of some of the key elements--such as profits--that make it work, and they’re hostile toward entrepreneurs.

* East Europeans clearly look more to Sweden and its mixed economy than the capitalist United States as a model.

* Despite their vote for Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democratic Party, eastern Germans seem destined to become Social Democratic Party supporters in the long run.

* The socialist tenets of the welfare state are so cherished in Western Europe that even Britain, after 11 years of Margaret Thatcher’s conservative economic policies, could not part with most of them.

With the collapse of Soviet-style communism, many Europeans are undergoing a transformation of a magnitude that has few precedents in world history. “We have no other choice but to convert to capitalism,” said a physician in Czechoslovakia, “but what we are trying here was never tried before, even on rats.”

Also, they are undertaking capitalism without some of the attitudes long looked upon as essential for it. “In order for our life to function well, we need one basic thing which we do not possess at all, namely the Protestant ethos of work,” said a Polish businessman.

In the former Soviet Union, support for a free market is hedged by hesitation. “My attitude to private property is positive,” said a young engineer in Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. “I consider privatization to be necessary and inevitable. Sooner or later we’ll come to it, but the sooner the better.

“I’m just afraid,” he went on, “to be a pioneer on this way. Seeing all the problems those who did it have today, something makes me wait.”

Trained by decades of Communist Party rule to scorn profits and capitalists, many people feel fury and jealousy when they contemplate their neighbors exploiting their property to make money. “While we have a dictatorship of jealousy,” said a Ukrainian in Kiev, “it’s hard to have private property.”

This view is buttressed by a worker in Volgograd, in Russia. “The mentality of the society is such that if a man becomes rich,” he said, “it means he’s a thief, a criminal.”

While Russians, Ukrainians and Lithuanians approve of a free market and, in fact, chide their own leaders for moving too slowly toward one, they clearly are not committed to the relatively unfettered American vision or even the modified West European approach.

The Russians, for example, would put farming and restaurants in private hands but keep health care, banks, heavy industry, telephones, radio and television, transportation, schools and electricity under government control. Shops, consumer goods, factories and newspapers would be divided between the government and the private sector. In some respects, the Russians are opting for the West European mixed economy--but with a heavier dose of socialism.

Asked to choose their society of the future, a plurality of Russians and Ukrainians opted for “a more democratic type of socialism” while a plurality of Lithuanians selected “a modified form of capitalism such as found in Sweden.” Only minorities in each country chose an American-type free market form of capitalism.

East Europeans, who mainly look on Sweden as their model, are also confused about capitalism. Hungarians, for example, are suspicious about private entrepreneurs taking over property that once belonged to the state. “I’ve never heard about a privatization that wasn’t criticized, let it be a hotel or Tungsran (a light-bulb manufacturing enterprise bought two years ago by General Electric) or anything,” said Istvan, a 60-year-old biological research manager in Debrecen. “They say we’re trying to give away the country.”

Attitudes fostered by the Communists linger on, stronger in some countries than others. A Bulgarian sociologist, for example, insists that his country has failed to shake off leftism. “Leftist values are present in the mentality of our people,” he said. He explained that while liberal and Roman Catholic forces opposed communism in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia during the era of Soviet domination, these forces were absent in Bulgaria. And now, with the end of Soviet domination, there is no well of non-leftist ideologies to draw from.

Contradictions emerge from the confusion. Although East Europeans deride anything run by the government as inefficient, they also want to rely far more than West Europeans on the government to take care of the welfare of its citizens.

Although East Europeans may know that they need foreign investment to spur their economies, they also are suspicious of outsiders and fearful of being exploited. This attitude, coupled with the potential for violence inherent in pervasive ethnic hostilities, could drive foreign investors away. “No one will be investing in a country which is practically a volcano,” said a Polish lawyer in Bialystok, “and no one knows when this volcano might erupt.”

“Let’s call a spade a spade,” said a Polish sociologist. “There is fear of big capital, foreign capital, here.”

Yet, East Europeans are elated about the changes wrought by incipient capitalism. “Everything is in the stores,” said a middle-aged weaver in Krakow in Poland. “There is no waiting in line. I can buy my child a banana if I can afford it. At one time one couldn’t even buy a stupid orange for a sick child in the hospital.”

The tension between the free market and Communist habits is surely undergoing its most delicate test in the newly united Germany. Unless capitalist and Communist attitudes are reconciled, the transition could be fraught with bitterness.

The Times Mirror survey made clear that four decades of Soviet-style communism have left eastern Germans with a greater affinity for socialist values than West Germans and a greater willingness to accept state intervention. Although the eastern Germans voted for the Christian Democratic Party of Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the early euphoria of unification, their attitudes seem to indicate a future swing to the opposition Social Democratic Party. That kind of change in eastern Germany would surely be enough to carry the Social Democrats to power in the new, unified nation.

It is not only eastern Germans who show socialist attitudes. “Germans are suspicious of profits,” said Dr. Josef Joffee, chief editor of the Suddeutsche Zeitung in Munich. “Profits are profiteering. It is an old ethic that comes down from the church. It is a Catholic social tradition.”

“There are no ‘Thousand Points of Light’ in Germany,” Joffee, who knows the United States well, went on. “The feeling is that the state should take care of people in trouble. If the government supplies meals on wheels, why the hell do you have to take care of the old lady down the street? You may not be qualified to take care of that old lady. The state has trained people to do that. After all, we come from a feudal system where the lord took care of his serfs.”

Yet, against this background, there also is a strong sense of self-reliance in Germany, even within the eastern region. “I think it is better when I can push my way up,” said a young German in Dresden, “ . . . and I’m able to achieve something through my own performance . . . rather than having a situation where everybody does the same . . . and gets paid the same amount of money.”

These tensions are echoed in the rest of Western Europe. The idea of the welfare state is unshaken in the region; it prevails in every country. This puts Western Europe into sharp contrast with the United States, which still champions rugged individualism.

A key difference in self-image etches this difference. Americans still believe, as the 19th-Century British poet William Ernest Henley put it, “I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.” But neither West Europeans nor East Europeans agree--Europeans believe that success in life is pretty much determined by forces beyond their control.

It’s part of a deep fatalism among Europeans. “Our culture believes in luck, in providence, in predetermination, in an outside force rather than in free will,” said Jose Antonio Martinez Soler, a Spanish television news analyst.

“Since (Spaniards) do not consider themselves responsible for their own actions, they believe that there is something or someone who is responsible for providing them with money or whatever they need in order to survive. It is a fatalistic attitude . . . an Arab rather than a Protestant attitude.”

West Europeans, powered by this fatalism, look to the state for protection against outside forces even when they disdain the state as inefficient and wasteful.

Yet, there is little doubt that some American ideas about the free market have made their way to Europe and prospered in such nourishing grounds as the conservatism of Britain under Thatcher’s rule and the “liberalism” (as Europeans call the advocacy of the free market) of former French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac.

This situation worries many Europeans. In fact, one theme kept cropping up in conversations with West Europeans: People fretted about an “egoism” that had crept into their societies, a modern tendency of people to care only about themselves and turn their backs on their neighbors.

“People only want to look at their own navels,” said Alfons Quinta, a well-known journalist in Barcelona.

“Life has changed: the sense of the common good is lost,” said Giorgio Alpeggiani, a Milan lawyer. “Now, we act for our personal self. We have fallen down.”

“All people care about is me-myself, nothing else,” said Maite de Guindos, a Madrid lawyer.

Yet, despite these worries, every measure of the Times Mirror poll showed that Europeans, whether from the East or West, are far more caring about the poor, far more imbued with socialist ideals, far more committed to a welfare state than are Americans.

A PERSONAL VIEW OF UNIFICATION

How has German unification affected their personal lives? Enthusiasm is an eastern Trait. Opinions of East Germans:

Better off: 48%

Not affected: 26%

Worse off: 23%

No opinion: 3%

Opininions of West Germans

Better off: 6%

Not affected: 70%

Worse off: 20%

No opinion: 4%

A SEASON OF DISCONTENT

Most Europeans feel the situation of their countries has gotten worse in the last five years.

Progress Decline Britain 16% 8% Bulgaria 8 79 Czechoslovakia 29 51 France 15 41 Germany (East) 45 30 Germany (West) 27 45 Germany (total) 31 42 Hungary 11 68 Italy 16 51 Lithuania 34 52 Poland 44 37 Russia 4 86 Spain 38 22 Ukraine 6 84