Eastern Europe's troubled transition

...Instituted in January 1990, the Balcerowicz plan (named after the new finance minister) accomplished several of its stated goals...

...But the political dimension of the scheme has been frequently overlooked...

...Then came the formation of the Mazowiecki government in September 1989, followed by the fall of the East German and Czechoslovak governments, the better-late-than-never Bulgarian perestroika, and the violent overthrow of Ceausescu in Romania...

...However remarkable the triumphs of the opposition movements in Eastern Europe, however pluralistic the elections that catapulted these movements into public office, in fact, the economic pro- grams these new governments have subsequently developed are exclusionary by design and unjust in their effects...

...The question here is not how to avoid austerity, how to sweeten it or postpone it or endlessly criticize it...

...The prime minister even trailed the "man from nowhere," Stanislaw Tyminski, an emigr6 businessman with a dubious political background and a flair for the inaccurate...

...Throughout the spring of 1990, he had been maneuvering for political space...

...The chief spokesman of this clan, Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs, suggested the neoliberal rem- edy of last resort (employed by the Reagan administration in the early '80s): squeeze inflation out of the system by setting into motion a deep recession...

...Should Walesa not democratize the economic reform process, however, he may follow Mazowiecki down the path of dimimshing electoral returns...

...The movements themselves were now in the position both to seize political power and to sell eco- nomic reform single-handedly...

...In the 1960s and '70s, Hungary and Yugoslavia fashioned celebrated economic reform packages, all within one-party systems...

...The Solidarity movement of 1980-81 was founded on principles of social justice, translated into appeals for greater economic and political democracy...

...ther leaders and parties in the region should pay careful attention to the Polish case...

...The various opposition movements in the region reflected these concerns...

...Both the economic problems and successes of the Balcerowicz plan have been closely followed and strenuously debated in Poland and abroad...

...Macroeconomic indicators would finally balance and the flow of aid from the West would be reopened...

...These questions should be answered in a democratic manner--not simply because one believes in abstract principles but for reasons that appeal as well to practitioners of realpolitik...

...In early 1989, the Polish and Hungarian Communist parties finally realized that unpopular economic measures--raising prices, introducing unemployment, cutting government expenditures--would be accepted only after the introduction of some form of political democracy...

...Walesa, it is often said, is the sum of his advisers...

...For one thing, egalitarianism is still strong in the region, both from a historical standpoint and from the inevitable internalization of socialist principles in even those sectors of the population that most consciously opposed Communist rule...

...How long will sacrifice be required...

...His showing indicates that political instability has become the new specter haunting the region...

...A major recession hit Poland in 1990: both agricultural and industrial 8 February 1991:91 production dropped, and the Polish standard of living, which had been below that of every country in the region except Romania, fell even further...

...Though capitalizing on discontent with the Balcerowicz plan during the fall campaign, President Walesa has not lessened the shock...

...Now, governments in the region are all in the middle or on the verge of implementing austerity programs certain to be unpopular and certain to lead to political destabilization...

...He recently returned from a six-month tour of Eastern Europe...

...For the better part of 1990, Prime Minister Mazowiecki remained the most respected politician in the country, drawing on the political capital of the Solidarity trade union movement to which he owed his position...

...Mazowiecki's fall from grace is more than simply a stunning political reversal...

...In coalition with opposition intellectuals or organized workers, the Communist parties imagined that their plans for modernization with attendant social costs would gain majority support...

...But not to everyone...

...But the Balcerowicz plan was far from a miracle...

...The strategy was politically sophis- ticated, putting the population through the wringer quickly before voters could throw the rogues out of office via the new medium of democracy...

...Grand coalitions and new social contracts between ruling Communist parties and emerging opposition movements were instant anachronisms...

...And in what manner will the decisions be made...

...These rapid political developments suddenly overshadowed eco- nomic reform...

...The Bulgarian opposition worked on behalf of jailed and unfairly treated ethnic Turks in the late '80s...

...Inflation eased, almost immediately...

...IOHN FEFFER EASTERN EUROPE'S TROUBLED TRANSITION DEMOCRACY IS SOUND ECONOMICS I n the fall of 1989, Tadeusz Mazowiecki formed the first non-Communist government in Poland and Eastern Europe after nearly forty-five years of one-party states...

...very economic programs themselves...

...He ran far behind Walesa whose Hobbesian political program (' 'a war of all against all") and nonex- istent economic program ("the people will give it to me"), should have disqualified him from the country's top spot, his Nobel Prize notwithstanding...

...and now, with neolib- erals, Walesa will keep to the Balcerowicz path...

...His Ron Overton The Acting Program Director Holds a Press Conference to Explain the Death of the Challenger Shuttle and Seven Aboard in a Fiery Cloud of Snow On the watch beneath his starched cuff nu'nbers continue to change matter is simply energy at rest a shift in information just as evidence of shirtsleeve weather is brought to our winter by a systematic arrangement of dots seen from the right distance his face fills the plane of the screen while a gull apparently glides into his left ear and out his right popularity waning, Lech Walesa immediately resumed his role as spokesman for the opposition...

...After declaring martial law and outlawing Solidarity in 1981, the Polish government attempted a go-it- alone economic restructuring which was ultimately ignored by a dispirited Polish population...

...Compared to nothing, which was the Solidarity economic policy at the time, the Sachs proposal was appealing...

...they are under- mining the social consensus necessary to implement reform...

...As austerity began to bite, he found the appropriate rhetoric, exploiting the public's per- cep.tions of the Balcerowicz plan as conspiratorial wheeling and dealing (a tactic that united anticommunism, anti-intellectualism, antimodemism, and anti-Semitism), and playing up his own "out- sider" status...

...When those adviseCrs were trade unionists, he championed industrial democracy...

...The public may not stand for anything else...

...Unemployment rose precipitously, homelessness became a major social issue, crime increased, and the Mazowiecki government had neither the money, the Western assistance, nor frankly the interest in developing social policies that could treat these ills...

...The Mazowiecki government was the first to take the plunge with its version of "overnight" capitalism...

...Quite the contrary: during his campaign, he promised acceleration of the plan and has subsequently appointed neoliberal Jan Bielecki as prime minister to replace Mazowiecki...

...Walesa's industrial diplomacy was no mere altruism...

...The collapse of the Eastern European economies at the end of the '70s transformed "reform" into a code word for austerity implemented from above and widened the gap between government and public on eco- nomic matters...

...Attentive to the complaints of average Poles, he was searching for the weak points of a government he ostensibly created...

...Many parties--Democratic Forum in Hungary, National Salvation Front in Romania, the former Bulgarian and Serbian Communist parties, the Havel faction of Czechoslovakia's Civic Forum--promised grad- ual market transitions rather than a Polish "shock" treatment and won over their liberal opponents in national elections...

...But who will sacrifice...

...Not only did he prove more popular than his parliamentary and ministerial colleagues, but he consistently outpolled his major opponent, Solidarity leader Lech Walesa...

...The zloty stabilized and trade surpluses began to appear...

...with political activists he urged political reform...

...Mazowiecki's repudiation at the polls raises a more general and critical question: Can eco- nomic modernization be achieved democratically...

...He negotiated compromises in the transport and shipyard sllikes in May, and in July he brought the Mlawa farmers' strike to a close in the face of a government decision to use force in the conflict...

...For many, however, Walesa was not outsider enough, thus the surprise turnout for Tyminski...

...Nonetheless, one year later, Mazowiecki placed third in the Polish presidential race...

...In promising long-range economic success, these programs, pat- terned after Poland's "shock therapy," will bring about political crises in the short-term, endangering not only the fragile par- liamentary mechanisms so recently revived, but ironically the JOHNFEFFER, a consultant to the American Friends Service Committee, is author of Beyond Drtente (Hill & Wang...

...92: Commonweal...

...Developed by a government put into place by a mass movement, the plan for "overnight" capitalism represented the triumph of the technocratic approach, a reliance on a small number of experts, mostly from the West and almost exclusively monetarists...

...Political reform and economic restructuring have only recently gone hand in hand in Eastern Europe...

...The modernization of Eastern Europe requires sacrifices, there is no way around it...

...As various leaders fail and their governments fall in the coming months and years, many reasons will be cited from economic downturns and political mistakes to the general fickleness of the electorate...

...After a brief honeymoon, Polish workers began to strike and farmers started their road blockades...

...One aspect--as in the Polish case--is likely to receive scant attention: the nondemocratic character of the economic reforms...