ON MY MIND
ON MY MIND; The Captive Nation
By A. M. Rosenthal; Tom Wicker is on vacation.
Published: May 10, 1988
The essence of what is going on in Poland, the root reality, is plain to see and known to every Pole. But outside Poland, in the stories and analyses and political dissections, it is almost never mentioned anymore. Why is that? Poland is a captive nation. Once, not long ago, that was not only known to Poles but acknowledged by the free nations, a fact accepted as a fact.
That is the root, and from it grow almost all of Poland's economic troubles and political unease, today as in the past four decades.
Now it is unfashionable for journalistic and diplomatic specialists to mention it. And it seems an embarrassment for the United States to talk about it. But neither fashion nor embarrassment can change historic reality and its consequences.
This is a fair description of any captive nation:
Its economic and political systems, both distasteful to its people, were imposed by another state. Its economic fortunes are shaped by the regular pressure or occasional benevolence of that state. Its leadership cannot survive without the approval of the greater power. Year to year and decade to decade, the threat of intervention - economic or military - varies in immediacy but never vanishes. If the danger of intervention disappeared entirely, the people would dismantle the imposed government and the structure on which it perches, fast.
In Poland, the description fits precisely. The Communist economic system, the rule of the Communist Party, the role of police power - all were chosen by the Soviet Union and imposed on the nation after World War II. Only fear of the Soviet Union prevents the system from being wiped out by the Polish people. A captive nation, by reasonable definition.
The strikes at Nowa Huta and Gdansk come from the failure of the imposed centralized system to create anything but economic chaos. Day in and day out, life is still hard and scrabbly for most Poles, not often rising above the threadbare.
Now the Government is asking more work from its people, eliminating subsidies, raising prices. It meets opposition from workers. They do not trust the Government, which is asking for changes to rectify its own blunder and abuse. An imposed government cannot commmand the loyalty needed for sacrifice and change; fruit of the root. The strikes will end. One day the workers will rise again, be put down again, rise again - the sad, brave Polish cycle of uprising and retreat, repeated over the years.
So Poland is captive still, as are the other countries of Eastern and Cental Europe - Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
The last three, the Baltic states, have been annexed and share the fate of the other Soviet ''republics.'' The other countries are still sovereign, allowed national existence within a Communist structure. They have some flexibility but know that Soviet power stands between them and any attempt to leave the system or even seriously challenge its foundation -Communist Party rule.
All this is hardly a secret. It is simply political reality in the Soviet sphere in Europe. Why is something so elemental mentioned so rarely? One reason is that the captivity of Eastern Europe is taken for granted as everlasting. It seems quixotic to bring it up any more.
Another reason is that Mikhail Gorbachev is making changes in the Soviet Union - not yet in political or governmental structure, but important nonetheless. In the West, the expectation rises that the Soviet Union, the captor, will lead the way to reform within the captive nations.
Perhaps, but there is no sign that Moscow will allow change to the point where Soviet control of the captive nations is threatened. And that, of course, is exactly the point to which real reform would lead.
The Reagan Administration, like American administrations from President Eisenhower's on, develops allergies to referring plainly to the captivity of Eastern Europe when big business with Moscow is afoot.
This is self-defeating condescension to Moscow. Mr. Gorbachev has seemed more willing to face realities than have his predecessors - or Washington for that matter. Perhaps one day, if he stays in office, he may face the great reality that holding nations in captivity brings not security but unending trouble and risk.
Perhaps. Until then, the U.S. cannot free the captive nations. It can merely pay their people the courtesy of acknowledging the conditions of their national existence, inconvenient and old-fashioned though it may be to do so. <