All Those New, Imported VCRs and Cars Only Heighten Poland’s Economic Woes : Europe: As the former Eastern Bloc’s economies continue in disarray, a disenchantment with Western methods and values has set in.

Christmas is over in Poland. Santa Claus landed last year with a sleigh full of gaudy consumer items from the West. For a few months the Poles squealed with delight, like children around the Christmas tree.

But the Poles soon learned what generations of Western kids have found out: Most presents are more fun to unwrap than to play with. Commercials promised that each new product--the VCR, the fashionable shoes, the microwave oven--will change your life. If only they did.

Americans and Western Europeans learned long ago to cope with consumer letdown, but in places like Poland it is a new and troubling feeling. The old life is gone, and few miss it. But the new life is turning out to be harder and less fulfilling than many expected.

As Polish life moves away from the fight against communism to the economic battles of a market system, people seem to be losing the optimism that accompanied Solidarity’s triumph. Freedom can sometimes seem like another VCR--something that glitters in the shop window but disappoints when you get it home.

Depending on your point of view, everything has changed in Poland over the last year--or nothing has. One year ago, private entrepreneurs peddled wares from wheelbarrows or set up stalls on street corners or flea markets. Today, the tired old state stores have given up the ghost and the new entrepreneurs have moved off the streets and into the shops.

Things Poles only dreamed about two years ago can now be seen in every village. Late-model Western cars gleam in the show windows of proud car dealers; satellite dishes put Polish homes in touch with broadcasts from around the world; rock videos appear on once-staid Polish television, and pirated copies of current Western hits continue to dazzle Polish VCR owners with visions of a way of life that seems close, and yet so far.

But if everything is changing in Poland, it is also true that nothing has. While a few people are finding their feet in the new system, most remain desperately poor. “The real Polish miracle,” says a university professor with two children and a salary of $90 a month, “is how we manage to survive.” He does by assiduous moonlighting--on two extra jobs.

Polish factories still turn out clunky objects that nobody wants; Polish peasants still rely on horses and oxen to work their plots of land. And with unemployment rising, wages stagnant and prices increasing at a disquieting pace, Poles are beginning to wonder if they will ever emerge from the shadows of communism.

Meanwhile, the sense of national purpose that once united the country is fading. The most troubling sign is a wave of white-collar crime committed by leading figures in Polish life. A former head of the National Bank awaits charges in a complex financial scandal; Poland’s inexperienced bankers have been unable to cope with a plague of well-placed thieves.

All this helps explain what is otherwise inexplicable: the crazy results of October’s elections, Poland’s first free vote since before World War II. More than 10 parties won seats in the 460-seat Sejm, but no party came close to a majority. One-fifth of the votes went to parties that backed Poland’s free-market reforms. About as many went to the Communists and their allies. Pro-Solidarity parties--themselves bitterly split over personality conflicts and ideological disputes--shared most of the rest of the vote with a group of anti-abortion, pro-church parties. The Beer Lover’s Party, with almost 5% of the vote, could probably end up playing a role in the new government.

President Lech Walesa now has the unenviable job of forming a government out of these unhappily matched parties. Ultimately, he will form a Cabinet that will go along with some, if not all, of the economic reform--but it is less and less certain that Poland, once Eastern Europe’s showcase for market-oriented policies, will stay the course of its ambitious program. Too many forces--the Catholic parties, the farmers’ parties, the Solidarity parties and the neo-communists--have too many doubts about reform.

This result casts a long shadow in Eastern Europe. Politicians in other countries will note that Poland’s reforming prime ministers watched their support melt away--one of the two reform parties won 12% of the vote, the other 7%.

Two years after Western ideas swept triumphantly across Eastern Europe, a backlash is setting in. It isn’t nostalgia for communism--nobody outside the hard-core ranks of party faithful wants to give communism another chance. But more and more people question the relevance of the advice that Western economists and politicians so freely dish out.

“We have to realize that our future lies with the East,” says one proponent of the new thinking in Poland. “The West does not want products from Polish factories, but in the Soviet Union and China we can make them an attractive price--even if our quality is not so good.” Western secular values, like Western economics, are losing their luster as well. The United States seems far away and not much help. The European Community, by far the most important trading partner for the East, is taking a hard line in economic negotiations. French farmers don’t want Polish hams in their grocery stores.

As the psychological divide between East and West reopens, non-Western and anti-Western values are emerging in the East. These include strident nationalism--an emotion that can become paranoid and fanatical in hard times. Old and sometimes unenlightened religious views--like a Catholicism that has not come to terms with the tradition of Christian anti-Semitism in Poland--become more powerful. And the egalitarian, anti-rich sentiment, with deep roots in Eastern Europe’s peasant societies, also threatens to become a potent, anti-market force. One thinks of the old Polish story. God grants an old peasant a wish, but on one condition: Whatever the peasant gets, his neighbor will get twice as much. The peasant thinks long and hard, then prays. “Lord,” he says, “make me blind in one eye.”

A “post-Western Poland” would be a poor and bitter place, and the failure of Western-oriented reforms in Poland would deal an immense blow to Western ideals throughout Eastern Europe. The new order in Europe could die in its infancy, with consequences for world peace almost too painful to contemplate.

Walesa, Poland’s reformers and the pro-democratic forces in all parties run risks as they attempt to align their country with Westerns ideals and methods. Now they need Western support more than ever. “Market reform” in Poland must not become just another synonym for hard times. The West must provide Poland with the aid, trade and debt-forgiveness assistance that can make a visible difference.

And, looming over Poland’s shoulder, as always, is the Soviet Union--bigger, poorer and worse off in every way. The failure of reform in Poland would be a tragedy; the failure of reform in the Soviet Union would be a catastrophe. Difficult as it may be, expensive as it may be, the West has no choice: We must help the Eastern countries to grow or we will pay an incalculable price down the road.

Unfortunately, two full years after the collapse of the communist system, and more than a year after the difficulties of economic reform began to appear, Western governments have not yet begun to face their responsibility.