Europe's New Renegade Reds

Time was when the Russians could imperiously summon a conference of European Communist parties, dictate the agenda, and crown the session with long speeches by comrades praising the Soviet Union as the true leader of the socialist world. Not any more, apparently. What was to have been a final preparatory meeting for an all-Europe Communist summit conference early next year ended in deadlock in East Berlin late last month. Instead of approving a document demonstrating Communist unity, the abortive meeting highlighted the unseemly disarray of Communism in Europe these days.

The summit was originally conceived as a follow-up to last summer's East-West European Security Conference in Helsinki and a kind of grand finale to Soviet Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev's decade of leadership. The Russians wanted a document they could present to their 25th Soviet Party Congress, scheduled for February, that would stress the disruptiveness of China's role in the Communist world and laud that of Moscow. Now there seems little chance that the Communist summit can be held before the Soviet Party Congress.

What Moscow failed to take into consideration was the growing independence of some of the more powerful Western Communist parties as well as Eastern Europe's two mavericks, Yugoslavia and Rumania. As a result, European Communism has split into two camps: on the one side are the Soviets, Poles, Czechoslovaks, Hungarians, Bulgarians and East Germans; on the other are the Italians, Spaniards, Yugoslavs and Rumanians.

The differences in East Berlin arose when the Russians and East European hard-liners presented a draft document stressing traditional ideology. The renegades instead wanted to emphasize the open spirit of Helsinki and insisted the conference follow three basic principles: 1) the conference should not adopt any policies without a general consensus of all parties, 2) nonconformists like the Italians should not become a target of criticism by others, and 3) individual parties should have the right to speak out even on unpopular topics like the Italian party's insistence on seeking power through democratic elections.

Clear Slap. Insiders say that Moscow at first actually seemed to yield on all the renegades' points. But suddenly the deliberations hit a snag. One explanation is that the Soviet leadership is divided over concessions to the Western individualists and hence did not want them down on paper. Another guess is that the Soviets did not really want the summit conference after all because it might emphasize the disunity of the Communist movement.

There were other troubles for the Kremlin to think about. In an extraordinary departure from tradition, the French Communist Party, long marked by its slavish loyalty to Moscow, moved sharply toward the more independent stance of its Italian comrades. In a joint communique issued by French Party Chief Georges Marchais and the Italians' Enrico Berlinguer, the two parties formally endorsed democratic change for their countries free of "all foreign interference" -- a clear slap at Moscow.

Lest there was any doubt that the self-styled "Communist parties of capitalist Europe" were veering away from Moscow, the position paper endorsed the "free circulation of people" -- an attack on Soviet emigration and travel restrictions. Western Europe's two largest Communist parties specifically asserted that "the right of each people to decide in a sovereign manner its own political and social regime must be guaranteed."

Marchais' display of political independence was apparently inspired by the French Communists' poor showing in the polls. They took a drubbing in recent parliamentary by-elections; popular support has held at a static 15% to 20%, while the Socialists have made significant gains. So have the Italian Communists, who now have the backing of more than 30% of the Italian people and are closing in on the long-dominant Christian Democrats. Marchais has been impressed by the popular appeal of the low-keyed, pragmatic approach of the Italian party's Secretary-General Berlinguer. In order to allay fears that Communist participation in a national government would mean revolutionary upheaval, he has gradually been moving toward an understanding with the ruling coalition, headed by Christian Democratic Premier Aldo Moro.

Berlinguer has led the party in a series of other autonomous stands, notably a cautious defense of Nobel Peace Prizewinner Andrei Sakharov and a plea to the regimes of Eastern Europe to liberalize. Obviously, Italy's unorthodox approach to Communism was not conducive to smooth negotiations for a Communist summit.

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