RUSSIA'S DILEMMA

Whatever course the Soviet Union ultimately takes in handling the Czechoslovak crisis -- from inaction to armed intervention--it will have to pay dearly. If Moscow chooses muscle, it will not only antagonize most of the non-Communist world but will also alienate many Communist countries and national parties. If it permits Dubcek to proceed, his sweeping reforms are bound to spread elsewhere and further weaken Russia's hold over its Communist neighbors. The Kremlin is caught in an enormous dilemma and. no matter what it does, the shape and strength of what used to be called the Communist bloc are bound to change drastically.

That shape has been changing, of course, for 20 years. The Soviets, in effect, abandoned the Marxist dream of total, supranational Communism with the dissolution of the Third International in 1943. Five years later, on a gamble that Stalin would not risk U.S. atomic firepower by intervening, Yugoslavia's Josip Broz Tito took the first successful walk from Moscow. The Kremlin successfully stamped out Hungary's uprising in 1956, but Tito has been followed in this decade by the puritanical Chinese and their sympathizers in Albania, then by Rumania's Nicolae Ceausescu, who wanted to pursue a freer foreign policy. Thus Russia now finds itself caught in the middle, between the Stalinist reaction of China on one side and the liberal yearnings of Czechoslovakia on the other.

Still, for all the talk of "polycentrism" in Communist leadership, Moscow has never really abandoned Nikolai Bukharin's notion that "centripetal tendencies" would one day unite world Communism under the Kremlin banner. Now the Czechoslovaks not only threaten to speed the breakup of Eastern Europe but propose a top-to-bottom spiritual reordering of the Communist way of life as well. Says British Kremlinologist Tibor Szamuely: "Russia is perfectly correct in interpreting the Czechoslovak experiment as something that will lead that country into a non-Communist democracy. The Soviet empire in Eastern Europe is at stake."

Moscow has watched the other Communist governments of Eastern Europe split badly on the Czechoslovak issue. Communist parties throughout Western Europe, moreover, reared back in almost unanimous disapproval of Russian pressure on Prague. In campaigns to win support from respectable liberals, their leaders had advertised Dubcek's "renewal," as Italian Party Boss Luigi Longo called it, to be the party's exciting new image. Now Moscow has damaged and perhaps destroyed that image. The resulting bitterness in the Communist camp has raised serious doubt that the Kremlin will really be able to hold the summit meeting scheduled for November, at which it desperately wants to consolidate support against the Chinese.

Should the Russians decide to intervene directly in Czechoslovakia, they might well cause a major and permanent schism among Communist countries and parties in Europe. Moreover, their own stock among Western European nations, so painstakingly built, would take a disastrous long-term plunge. The ultimate effect would be to drive back the Western half of the Continent--even such thumping anti-Americans as France's Charles de Gaulle-to the pale of U.S. influence. Intervention in Czechoslovakia would certainly bring an abrupt end to Russia's slow detente with Washington. Indeed, in the eves of most of the world, Russia might well take over the bad-boy spot so long held by the U.S. for its Viet Nam involvement.

The Russians are deeply aware of Czechoslovakia's strategic position in Europe and of Bismarck's dictum that "whoever controls Bohemia controls Europe." With borders touching five countries, Czechoslovakia is a major buffer between the Soviet Union and the NATO countries. Its loss would also threaten the position of East Germany, Russia's staunchest ally. The Kremlin has already been forced to act tougher toward West Germany, which has recently made efforts to begin friendly relations with several East European nations--and which is potentially Czechoslovakia's prime source of industrial credit. First Moscow gave the go-ahead to East Germany, its front line against Bonn influence, to slap new travel restrictions on all West Germans. Last week it released the text of a memo that ruled out, in harsh language, any easy improvement in Bonn-Moscow relations. The Kremlin clearly fears that West German inroads in Eastern Europe will encourage more loosening of its already fragmenting alliances.

Apart from solely strategic considerations, however, the Russians realize that, despite his lip service to Communism and the Warsaw Pact, Alexander Dubcek has altered Czechoslovakia from its Communist foundations up. Not even Tito, in his 20-year freedom from Moscow's reins, has so thoroughly revamped his nation's government and institutions. What Dubcek has done, the Kremlin knows, could easily spread to the 60,000 Poles who visit Czechoslovakia each year, to neighboring Hungarians--or across the Czechoslovak border into Russia's Ukraine. Whether or not Dubcek succeeds in facing off the Russians, says Professor William E. Griffith of M.I.T., he has unleashed "the most significant change in the European status quo since 1948." If he does succeed, historians will begin a new chapter on world Communism with his dramatic challenge.

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