The Politics of Paranoia

Walter Ulbricht's fears can be summed up in one word: isolation. Dependent on the presence of 20 Red army divisions for his survival, Ulbricht fears any diplomatic development that might leave his half of Germany stranded in Central Europe among countries that no longer practice his rigid, monolithic form of Communism. Alexander Dubcek's experiment in liberalizing Czechoslovakia thus represents a particular nightmare for the old East German boss. He fears that the Czecho slovaks will recognize West Germany in return for economic help. That, according to Ulbricht's domino theory, would lead to similar action by Hungary and the eventual isolation of his own satrapy.

A skilled political infighter, Ulbricht has been doing all that he can to avoid such a chain of events. At first, he favored the overthrow of Dubcek's regime. But the Soviet accommodation at Cierna and Bratislava undoubtedly impressed upon Ulbricht the fact that his Eastern European neighbors no longer buckle under the way they used to. As a result, Ulbricht has embarked on a series of dramatic political maneuvers that have left diplomats in Europe wondering what he will do next.

Surprising Departures. On his return from Bratislava, Ulbricht summoned the vacationing members of the East German Parliament to an emergency session. The members braced themselves for another denunciation of West Germany's conciliatory new policy that aims at creating closer cooperation between the two halves of Germany. Indeed, Ulbricht did reiterate some of the old demands, including his insistence that Bonn must respect East German borders. But Ulbricht made some surprising departures from his usual script. He no longer insisted on full diplomatic recognition as the prerequisite for negotiations. He even hinted that trade talks could begin without any preconditions whatsoever. After stonewalling on the issue of German reunification for more than 23 years, Ulbricht had shown the first glimmers of flexibility, faint though they were.

That done, Ulbricht popped over to Czechoslovakia for his talk with Dubcek. He apparently now realizes as never before that many of the East European party bosses, including Dubcek, are impatient with the way Ulbricht has tried for years to block their efforts to normalize relations with Bonn. Nonetheless, he wants to force West Germany to come to some sort of understanding with East Germany before Bonn is allowed to make major diplomatic advances elsewhere in the East bloc. Thus, even though he made no progress at Karlovy Vary in trying to reverse Czechoslovakia's internal reforms, Ulbricht may well have counted the trip worthwhile, since he got Dubcek to pledge Czechoslovakia's support for his new initiatives toward West Germany. It was, to be sure, only a pro forma endorsement. But in Ulbricht's hands it might prove useful as a sort of power of attorney that he could use to extract the maximum advantage for himself out of West Germany's desire to establish diplomatic relations with Eastern Europe.

Prisoners for Sale. At 75, Ulbricht retains both his good health and his remarkable instinct for survival. A leading German Communist in the turbulent 1920s, he evaded the Nazi crackdown in the early '30s by fleeing to Moscow, where Stalin's protection saved him from the purge that decimated the ranks of the German exiles. During the Civil War in Spain, Ulbricht was a Soviet agent assigned the job of eliminating anti-Stalinist West Europeans from positions of leadership in the republican forces. He was back in Russia in time to direct a propaganda campaign on the battlefield that was aimed at the invading German troops. In 1945, the victorious Red army brought him to Berlin, and to power.

In a recent interview with a Dutch TV commentator, Ulbricht credited hi$ fitness to gymnastics and swimming, though, in his words, "I don't talk about it as much as Chairman Mao." On the surface, both party and country also appear to be in good shape. His hand-picked successor, Erich Honecker, 56, is from the same Stalinist mold as his boss, and there is no audible dissension in the party. In a remarkable economic achievement, East Germany has become the world's ninth most important industrial power, and the country's 17 million people enjoy a higher living standard than any other Communist nation, including the Soviet Union.

Even so, Ulbricht must dread the Czechoslovak contagion almost as much as he fears being isolated from like-minded Communist countries. East Germans enjoy none of the freedoms of press and artistic expression that the Czechoslovaks are presently savoring. The Wall, now seven years old, is still needed to keep East Germans from fleeing en masse to the West. Despite the country's relative prosperity, Ulbricht still cannot resist the temptation to earn a few million extra West German marks each year by trafficking in human lives. Under a secret arrangement with Bonn, he allows the West German government to ransom political prisoners from East German jails. In fact, about 30 were released to West German authorities earlier this month. In the long run, the stirrings of personal freedom in Eastern Europe may do more to unsettle Ulbricht's dictatorship than any dramatic turn of international diplomacy on the German question.

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