The Converts’ Faith in Us Is Slipping : Hungary: Prosperity was as much a lure as political freedom; as prosperity is delayed, democratic faith erodes.

This week, the world is trying to organize aid to the former Soviet Union. Given the stakes, this is a necessary effort. But it risks being done at the expense of a better bet: helping the states of Central and Eastern Europe make their entry into the modern world.

Two years after the Berlin Wall opened and communist regimes fell like tenpins, it is convenient to believe that their conversion to pluralistic politics and market economics is complete. Convenient but wrong. In fact, the hope that marked the end of communist tyranny is rapidly eroding. Few of the region’s countries have any historical experience with democracy, and none has yet developed a political culture of compromise, accommodation and deferred expectations.

The revolutions of 1989 took place in part because of the allure of freedom; equally important was the allure of prosperity, the magnetism of the European Community. But as the standard of living falls and unemployment rises, faith in the democratic method is taking a beating.

Except for the eastern part of united Germany, Hungary is best placed to make the leap from state economy to a Western system. Ten years ago, Hungary exploited its position as a strategic backwater to begin experimenting with Western economics. Today, it has more management experience in the Western style than any of its neighbors, plus a reasonably well-trained work force that has one of the world’s highest scientific aptitudes. And Hungary has no disaffected minority populations to dissipate its energies.

Success is elusive, however. Like other states in the region, Hungary is critically dependent on foreign investment to convert an economy stifled for decades by wrong ideas and loaded with factories that can’t compete. Last year, $1 billion did flow in, a transfusion still too slow and insufficient for the pace of political demands.

Hungary’s first crop of post-communist leaders is long on courage but short on experience. Legislation needed to provide a legal framework for local entrepreneurs and confidence for investors is only gradually emerging. The Christian, conservative government tends to neglect essentials in favor of debating the past. And rudimentary opinion polls show that a majority of Hungarians oppose new elections because they have no confidence that another exercise in democracy will make a difference.

Reputedly, to be Hungarian is to talk as a pessimist and act as an optimist. At some point this richly endowed nation will make it, and make it big. At some point, it will provide a major market for Western goods while contributing more than its share to the global economy. But helping Hungary and its neighbors to get from here to there while avoiding authoritarian politics needs to be put back on the U.S. agenda.

This should be obvious from what is happening elsewhere. Next-door Yugoslavia has ceased to exist, after the heaviest fighting Europe has seen since World War II. That sorry example of a new politics on the Continent might not be repeated elsewhere, but the potential exists. Even Hungarians content with their borders are sensitive to the fate of cousins in places like Romania, where democracy has a most uncertain future. And the unfreezing of history in the demise of communism threatens to restore the Balkans’ legendary reputation as a breeder of conflict, even if it does not engulf the Continent.

There is more cause to worry farther East. No one in Poland, or in the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic, or in Hungary wants to be regarded as part of a buffer between East and West. They are desperate to join any Western collective that will have them. But their resilience is important, both for themselves and for the West, as the more riveting drama is played out in the former Soviet Union. How much worse would be the impact of turmoil in Ukraine, Belarus, or Russia if Eastern Europe were also coming apart?

Hungary’s success has special significance. As the region’s first country to begin reforming, it has long been a model for others and has now become a test for all. If this state is unable to develop an economy that can support democratic pluralism, then many others will lose hope.

On moral, economic and strategic grounds, this should matter to the United States. America should provide support far beyond the pittance of the past two years. The private sector should increase investment in Hungary and its neighbors where chances are good for a fair return and future markets. For what happens to those countries will cast a shadow on the future of the former Soviet Union.