Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 10, 1990 TAG: 9006110181
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: B-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KENNETH RYSTROM
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Leaders in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland repeatedly told us that they now consider themselves part of "Central Europe." Feeling free from bonds imposed from the east, they are looking westward. Wherever we went, officials and people on the street alike made it clear that they are thinking of free-market economies, multiparty democracy - and aid from the United States.
They say they want as few ties as possible with the Soviet economy, which they see as being in deep trouble.
The most visible evidence of the shaking off of the Soviet yoke showed up in the streets of East Berlin, Prague, Warsaw, Budapest and Bucharest.
In Prague, a statue of Lenin had been yanked from a prominent site and hauled away, but the crane that had been used to remove it remained amid piles of dirt and rubble. Hurrying to keep an appointment with the new Czechoslovak foreign minister, we spotted through our bus windows a 6-foot bust of Josef Stalin sitting in the bed of a truck parked along the street.
In Budapest, "People's Republic Avenue" was being renamed for a famous Hungarian nobleman. The square in front of the old Communist Party headquarters was renamed "Liberty Square" in honor of Hungary's efforts to gain freedom in 1956.
In several cities, we were told that streets named after Lenin, Stalin and Soviet Revolution dates were quickly being changed back to their former names. "Communist" has become a bad word, and so has "People" as in the "People's Republic of . . . " We were reminded repeatedly that these nations were now simply the "Republic of . . . "
In Bucharest, the name of an obscenely grandiose, partly constructed government building (an obsession of the late President Ceausescu) has been changed from "Palace of the People" to "Palace of the Republic." On an inside wall of one of the ministries, the Romanian characters for "People's Republic" have been removed from the name of the ministry, leaving a large gap between the remaining words.
In Warsaw, the huge building formerly housing the Polish Communist Party (known as "the White House") sits vacant with no external sign of the identification of its former occupants.
These were visible symbols of what we were told repeatedly throughout the new "Central Europe": The Communist parties are dead; communism has been thoroughly discredited; no one now openly carries a communist banner.
But not all signs were quite so clear.
Our group sat as observers in the East German Parliament building while returns came in from local elections. While communists did poorly throughout most of East Germany, they carried a strong 38 percent of the vote in East Berlin.
A former mayor of West Berlin, Deipgin Eberhard, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, told us he was worried about that pocket of communist strength in what no doubt would become the capital of a unified Germany. (He may have his eye set on becoming mayor of all of Berlin.)
Our visit to Romania coincided with national elections. For more than a month, in University Square outside our hotel, hunger strikers and thousands of their sympathizers had been demonstrating 24 hours a day against the Iliescu government. Interviewing people in line to vote, we found support for two opposition parties that proposed moving more rapidly than the government toward a free economy. But when the votes were counted, Ion Iliescu's National Salvation Front Party received more than 80 percent.
That party is made up largely of former members of the discredited Ceausescu administration. Opponents contend that the party is merely a disguised version of the disbanded Communist Party.
To Iliescu's credit, even his critics acknowledge that he has rescinded some of the more inhumane practices of the old regime. One of them was tearing down peasant houses along the road Ceausescu took to a lake resort so he would not have to look at unpleasant sights.
In each country, we encountered debates over how rapidly to move toward a free-market economy. Poland has gained the reputation of going "cold turkey" - freezing wages, reducing but not eliminating inflation, and letting unemployment raise.
But none of the other countries has had the benefit of the unifying moral force of Solidarity - and recent local elections suggest that voters are not so enthusiastic about Solidarity as they were a year ago.
We were told that President Vaclav Havel's popularity gives the Czechoslovak government a good chance of winning public approval to move swiftly toward a free economy. But so far, the country has moved slowly. Havel, media people speculated, would not tip his hand until after elections this month.
We were surprised to find that Hungary has been creeping toward a market economy for 10 years or so. Budapest was the most commercially advanced city we visited (aside from West Berlin). While there, we sat in on a trial run of Eastern Europe's first stock-market exchange, set to open this month.
All these countries, and the Soviet Union, admit they need foreign capital if they are to make headway toward privatization of property and a free market. Everywhere we went, leaders were trying to figure out ways to assure investors of profits and of their ability to take profits back home.
At present, most of the local currencies are worthless outside their respective national boundaries.
The countries of the new Central Europe hope desperately that, within a few years, their money and their economies can stand up to competition from the West. At the moment they can only face hopefully, and wistfully, toward the West.
by CNB