With Friends Like These . . .

By Jill Smolowe

Mikhail Gorbachev stepped from his gleaming white Ilyushin 62 jet at Bucharest's Otopeni International Airport, his lips tightened almost to a grimace. Overhead, staring down from the roof of the terminal building, were two giant portraits, one of Gorbachev, the other of his host, Rumanian President Nicolae Ceausescu. On the tarmac below, workers roared a dual greeting -- "Ceau-Ses-Cu! Gor-Ba-Chev!" The Soviet leader, who has downplayed the personality cults favored by his predecessors in the Kremlin, was plainly appalled. Quickly traversing a vast expanse of red carpet to reach a microphone erected in expectation of a speech, Gorbachev said curtly, "Greetings, comrades." Then he strode away.

The tension continued throughout Gorbachev's three-day trip to Rumania, the first official visit by a Soviet leader since 1976. It was also the last of a series of outings to the six East bloc countries, whose aging leaders generally regard Gorbachev's reforms with suspicion, seeing in them a subtle reproach to their policies and a threat to their power. Gorbachev had saved the toughest challenge for last. Ceausescu's Rumania is the most rigorously centralized and thoroughly policed of the Soviet satellites. The aging and bafflingly eccentric Ceausescu, 69, has spurned Gorbachev's campaign of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), apparently ordering the state-controlled media to avoid all mention of such initiatives. Thus, while glasnost is approaching the status of a household word in the West, Rumanians have heard little about Gorbachev's reforms.

Like a missionary spreading the gospel, the Soviet leader wasted no opportunity to talk up his policies. "If we are silent about certain shortcomings, then they inevitably grow," he warned. "Half-truth is worse than a lie." Gorbachev, 56, also spoke glowingly of Soviet attempts to bring "democracy closer to man," words that must have chilled the autocratic Ceausescu and his imperious wife Elena, 68, both of whose birthdays are national holidays. Beyond some pointed jabs at Rumania's dismal economic performance, Gorbachev avoided specific charges against the Ceausescu regime. The implicit warning, however, was clear: a recalcitrant Rumania would not be permitted to drag down the pace of Moscow's modernization drive.

Ceausescu, for his part, indicated that he would not be cowed by Moscow's new boy. The regime ordered eight Western journalists turned back at the airport. Because the international press is usually granted access to Rumania, some diplomatic observers interpreted the abrupt about-face as both a retaliation for past critical reporting and a calculated swipe at Gorbachev's beloved glasnost campaign. "This is not openness," said U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmerman. "This is closedness."

After laying a wreath at Bucharest's imposing Lenin monument, Gorbachev waded into a crowd of Rumanians and, inviting an open exchange, said, "Even if you were to tell me that everything is all right in the country and in every family, I wouldn't believe it. There are problems." The quote was reported in the Soviet press but not in the Rumanian media. At a state dinner that evening, Gorbachev took aim at the shoddy quality of the manufactured goods exported by Rumania to the Soviet Union, warning that substandard shipments would not be tolerated. Ceausescu waxed eloquent on the merits of the Rumanian-Soviet friendship but pointedly failed to endorse reform, saying only that he was following the course of the Soviet program "with interest."

The next day, at a rally of 5,000 Rumanian party faithful televised live in both Moscow and Bucharest, the gulf between the two men became painfully apparent. Gorbachev looked embarrassed and grim as Ceausescu's speech dragged on, punctuated by 19 standing ovations. The Soviet leader often stopped clapping well ahead of the crowd. When Gorbachev spoke, he referred with surprising directness to Rumania's fuel and food shortages, which have been steadily worsening over the past five years. "You know that you have a lot of difficult problems in front of you," he said. Such candor must have startled the Rumanians, though Gorbachev's remark was in fact a vast understatement. Once the breadbasket of the region, Rumania is today regarded as the East bloc's most glaring economic failure. Bread, cooking oil and other basics are rationed, and such staples as flour and eggs are often unavailable. In Transylvania, doctors report malnutrition among children. Yet at the Bucharest market toured by Gorbachev and his wife Raisa, stalls were heaped high with fresh beef, pork, fruits, vegetables and even venison pate. Had the Gorbachevs looked back, they would have seen scores of people surge forward through security cordons to buy the goods. The market had been stocked only the day before.

At midweek Gorbachev left the muddy streets of Bucharest for the spotlessly swept boulevards of East Berlin. There, the atmosphere was far less frosty at a meeting of Warsaw Pact leaders, with whom Gorbachev sat down for two days of talks at the Palast Hotel. It was the third East bloc summit since Gorbachev took office. Earlier in the week East Berlin and Bonn had buzzed with speculation that Gorbachev planned to use the meeting to announce unilateral Soviet troop reductions in Eastern Europe. The prospect sounded plausible, given Moscow's eagerness for Western approval for its European disarmament proposals. The Soviet arms initiatives, which would remove both medium-range and short-range missiles from the Continent, have made West Europeans fear that such an accord would leave them facing superior Warsaw Pact conventional forces.

Before the East Berlin talks even got under way, however, Soviet officials moved to dampen expectations. Troop reductions, said a Soviet spokesman, would have to be on the basis of "mutual agreement." Still, the final communique reflected an awareness of Western concerns by stating that the pact stood prepared to redress the "imbalance that has arisen in certain elements." Mainly, however, the conference served the purposes Gorbachev had intended: to encourage policy discussion, in the spirit of reform, and to exert discipline over the Warsaw Pact, in the spirit of tradition.

With reporting by Kenneth W. Banta/East Berlin and John Kohan/Moscow