DROP MARX, GO FOR THE SOUND BITE

By JAMES O. JACKSON

WHEN A TRIUMPHANT LECH WALESA became President of Poland in 1990, European communism appeared to be finished for good. As police states dissolved, members by the millions tore up their party cards, and democratically elected parliaments in most of the newly free countries voted to bar communist parties from the political process.

Now, barely five years later, ex-communists have returned to power across much of Eastern Europe, and last week the mighty Walesa himself fell victim to the comrades' comeback. Aleksander Kwasniewski, 41, a minister in the last communist Polish government, defeated the old Solidarity war-horse in a runoff presidential election. Kwasniewski's Social Democratic Party, created from the remnants of communism in 1990, already leads a governing coalition in the parliament, and the President-elect will play a vital role in the creation of a constitution to guide Poland into the next century. "He is the Moses of the Polish left," declared Zbigniew Siemiatkowski, Kwasniewski's campaign spokesman. "He guided it over the stormy seas of politics to a new reality."

The good news, however, is that nearly all those former communists, including Kwasniewski, appear to have abandoned their Marxist past. All reached power through free and democratic elections, they are pursuing policies of privatization and market economics, and they are clamoring for membership in both NATO and the European Union. "Poland will never go back from the road of reform and democracy," Kwasniewski pledged, adding that he would move ahead with market reforms and continue the Western-oriented foreign policy established by Walesa. "I am prepared to bet that within five years Poland will be a member of NATO with Kwasniewski as President."

Like other reformed communists, Kwasniewski owes much of his success to the pain caused by economic and political transformation. Five years of double- and sometimes triple-digit inflation wiped out savings, privatization eliminated jobs, the collapse of the police state allowed crime to flourish, and cash-strapped governments cut back on social services. "Conspicuous consumption," says Oxford University's Timothy Garton Ash, has coincided with "conspicuous immiserization."

Yet it was not mere misery that defeated Walesa. Kwasniewski's appeal was more to youth and the future than to the stern stability of the communist past. His movie-star good looks and pleasant manner contrasted with a graying, truculent Walesa, who directed his appeal to a Polish Catholic conservatism that is going out of style. "It's more true that Walesa lost the election than that Kwasniewski won it," says Bronislaw Geremek, chairman of the Sejm's Foreign Affairs Committee.

Walesa behaved rudely toward his opponent, refusing to shake his hand during television debates and referring repeatedly to his service as Minister of Youth Affairs under the communist regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski. "He is a man identified with a gang of thugs," Walesa growled. In a society that values courtly manners, the old electrician's style grated. "He did not realize that democratic power means persuading people," says Geremek.

Kwasniewski did. He and his supporters ran a media-savvy campaign modeled on U.S. politics, complete with sound-bite-size speech lines and punchy TV spots. Kwasniewski responded to Walesa's rough arrogance with gentle gibes. "I appreciate Mr. Walesa's achievements," he remarked. "But he reminds me of an athlete who keeps harking back to the fact that he once won a gold medal." The challenger's strategy worked. "Symbolically, Kwasniewski represented modernity and change," says Wiktor Osiatynski, a Polish historian. "It is a corrupted modernity with a communist past on its back, but it's still modernity."

After Kwasniewski's win, messages of congratulations poured in from many nations, including the members of nato and the E.U. None dwelt on his party past. "It's not the background or the personal experience of the candidates, it is the policies that they will pursue in the future," said Mike McCurry, the White House spokesman. "And on that point, President-elect Kwasniewski has been very clear."

Doubts remain, though the President-elect resigned from the Social Democrats in a move to broaden his support. Osiatynski worries that most of the postcommunist countries have yet to adopt a constitution and laws that can protect against a return of totalitarianism. Says he: "Now communists are back in power and have control over a great part of capitalism and the state. That is very sad."

--Reported by Tamala M. Edwards/Washington and Tadeusz L. Kucharski/Warsaw

With reporting by TAMALA M. EDWARDS/WASHINGTON AND TADEUSZ L.KUCHARSKI/WARSAW