Uneasy Lies the Bloc

While President Nixon prepared for his swing through the capitals of Western Europe, Eastern Europe last week marked a melancholy milestone. Six months have passed since Warsaw Pact tanks rumbled into Czechoslovakia, but Communism's East Bloc still remains uneasy and uncertain.

Like Western Europe, Eastern Europe is pulling apart. It is torn by resurgent nationalism and the desire to trade with the West. These trends run directly counter to the interests of the Soviet Union, which seeks to dominate the bloc's economic activities through Comecon, the Communist equivalent of the Common Market, and to control political developments through Moscow-dominated Communist parties. But Comecon is a failure, and the Soviet attempt to impose its will on Czechoslovakia now appears to have created more problems than it solved.

Spring Maneuvers. By their invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Soviets arrested, for a time at least, the spread of liberal reforms and forced the country to return more or less to the practice of orthodox Soviet-style Communism. But the Soviets failed in their broader goal of imposing unity on the divided bloc. That failure, along with the defection of the West European Communist parties, is sure to cause further reverberations if the oft-postponed world Communist summit actually does convene in May in Moscow.

The invasion, in fact, only widened the schisms in Eastern Europe. After an initial period of intimidated silence, the Rumanians, the only active Warsaw Pact members that did not participate in the invasion, have become more outspoken than ever against Russian domination in Eastern Europe. Displeased, the Soviets in turn are pressing to hold Warsaw Pact maneuvers in Rumania this spring. Last week Soviet Marshal Ivan Yakubovsky, the Warsaw Pact commander, and Soviet First Deputy Foreign Minister Vasily Kuznetsov, until recently the Russian viceroy in Prague, visited Bucharest for a chat with Rumanian leaders.

Spring maneuvers could bring dangerous tensions to the Balkans. Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito, who had been enjoying a rapprochement with the Soviets, has withdrawn to his old neutralist stance and begun to strengthen his country's defenses. The Hungarian reaction has been different from all others, probably because the Czechoslovak episode revived the country's own memories of a far more harsh repression 13 years ago. In hopes of escaping a second crackdown, the Hungarians are keeping the political trappings in place, but at the same time are quietly pursuing cultural and economic reforms.

Hate Campaign. Along the northern "iron axis," the invasion strengthened the rule of the hardliners. Stalinist Boss Walter Ulbricht seized on scattered protests against the invasion to cow East German students and intellectuals. He also began mobilizing East German youth for military service, and started an intense hate-West Germany propaganda campaign that prepared the way for his present war of nerves against the selection of a West German President in West Berlin. Polish Party Chief Wladyslaw Gomulka tightened his grip on the leadership by using the issue of bloc solidarity to rebuff his rival, former Interior Minister Mieczyslaw Moczar, an ardent anti-Semite and nationalist who seeks to lessen Polish dependence on Russia. The Bulgarians, the Soviet Union's most slavish satellites, remain totally obedient to Moscow's bidding.

The East Bloc's divided nature inevitably raises the question of how the Soviets will cope with the next country that seeks a greater measure of independence. There is an abiding fear that the Soviets will continue to rely on force, as they have three times in the past 16 years, to keep their unwilling allies in line. The other alternative, of course, is for the Soviets to accept a greater independence among the Eastern European countries and perhaps eventual erosion of the East Bloc system.

Its demise would be a slow process that would set off reciprocal changes in Western Europe's trade and security systems. As attractive as that prospect may seem to many Europeans in both the East and the West, there is unfortunately no indication that the Soviet Union is ready to countenance any such evolution. Until a change of policy -- or leaders -- occurs in the Kremlin, Europe will most likely be forced to settle for something less than a crumbling of the bloc.

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