Correspondents' Correspondence
SALPETER, ELIAHU & LIPPMAN, SYDNEY COFFIN & HENEGHAN, TOM
Correspondents Correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Feast and Famine Cairo There it was before me, the...
...The orthodox Czech leadership, for its part, has taken any occasion to strike back...
...asked Jessica...
...Bonn maintains that too much stimulation would produce inflation, and that undermining the Deutschemark's stability would be more dangerous to Western Europe than a slower economic recovery...
...Agriculture Department to help American businessmen break into the Egyptian market...
...My mouth watered, my fingers twitched...
...Through a series of skillful compromises, Kadar has developed the most liberal form of Communism in Eastern Europe, and the one that is perhaps closest to being a real "national road...
...Despite the seasonal nature of most fruits and vegetables, the fresh produce is generally excellent: There are artichokes much of the year, mangoes better than the American ones, good melons, flavorful (if stringy) celery, tomatoes year round, and excellent onions, garlic and oranges...
...All we could get was local butter, made from water buffalo milk, that only looked the same...
...Since Egyptian flour is heavy, so are the cakes...
...Wouldn't you like some salad dressing...
...1 hung out by the canned corn, a long forgotten treat...
...While veal is very tender (the calves are slaughtered younger than in America), beef tends to be chewier than in the U.S...
...Some favored the beef Wellington or shrimp...
...The 5-5.5 per cent growth target set by OECD member states had been regarded as the minimum for starting a slow cutback in the industrialized countries' jobless rates...
...There can be "no single recipe, compulsory model or immutable pattern," the Party daily Scinteia wrote, "that should be recommended or imposed on other countries or peoples...
...It should be remembered, though, that he hardly shares most of their views on pluralism and individual liberties...
...Recent foreign currency developments, however, have made several West European capitals question whether there is really any cause for appreciation...
...The more likely 4 per cent means that in some nations there will be no reduction in the number of people out of work, while in others the figure may even increase...
...The average Egyptian shopper wasn't encouraged to attend, though...
...Meat, sold in special butcher shops, is available only on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays...
...After loading up as well with peanut butter, Green Goddess salad dressing, prunes, horseradish and mayonnaise, I decided it was time to go because I couldn't carry any more...
...We've learned from our own misfortunes," he observed, referring to the Hungarian uprising of 1956, "and what we've learned, we won't forget...
...So there I was on the final day with two small, eager children in tow...
...Indeed, say the Germans, an increasing number of European companies will have to set up factories across the Atlantic to remain competitive in the U.S.A move that will help protect profits, but at the expense of Western Europe's unemployed...
...In a speech delivered even before the Soviet weekly New Times lashed out against Spanish party chief Santiago Carrillo for his heresy, hardliner Vasil Bilak characterized Eurocommunism as "a product of anti-Communism being foisted on the Western parties...
...It does not taste the same either, possibly because the cattle never get very fat, their diet consisting more of clover than of grain...
...Contradictions of that kind are one reason why the question of Eurocommunism's effect on Eastern Europe remains open...
...They were part of an exhibition sponsored by the U.S...
...For both studies imply future social unrest at home and sharpening tensions abroad...
...Bob Marlowe, commodities director for the Georgia Farm Bureau Federation, seemed interested to learn that the tasty local peanuts made good peanut butter...
...Milk remains a problem...
...he called to a man showing hundreds of enormous brown eggs...
...It is the duty of every Party to take the traditions and characteristics of the specific country into account," Party leader Janos Kadar said in a recent interview...
...No salesman wanted to lug canned goods and cake mixes back to the land of the supermarket...
...The Polish party maintains business-like contacts with the PCI, and a Polish delegation recently visited Rome to discuss common experiences in dealing with the Church...
...The strongest critique of Eurocommunism, actually an attack, has of course come from the Czechoslovak Party...
...Can I have some animal crackers...
...Two years of pent-up doing without sent me giddily from table to table, exclaiming along with other American residents of Cairo: "Oooh, look at the Uncle Ben's...
...We made the rounds together, trying out popcorn, pretzels, peanuts, and cookies, and chatting with the exhibitors...
...It's okay, but not quite the same as the real thing, and fresh cow's milk is always the first treat we buy the children on trips out of Egypt...
...Considering Rumania's relative independence in foreign affairs, it was natural that Ceausescu would support any Communists trying to develop an independent line...
...Whatever, the indications that West Germany's GNP will rise less than 4 per cent instead of the planned 4.5 per cent will doubtless add to the pessimism now almost de rigeur among Bonn financial analysts and commentators...
...Like Caesar's wife, though, the SED is presumably so above suspicion in its loyalty to Moscow that it is considered best suited to play the middleman's role...
...What this might do to the already precarious stability of certain West European governments needs no elaboration: One need merely recall the crucial role unemployment has played in strengthening the Socialist-Communist alliance in France, where general elections are due next year...
...Although this may create jobs in the U.S., it is argued, it does nothing for Western Europe...
...There were enormous ones from Pennsylvania that seemed even bigger because of the minuscule Egyptian eggs...
...The exhibition began with an opulent buffet including American roast beef, sliced turkey roll, shrimp, duck, and chicken a la king...
...Eventually we fell in with C. B. Sprague, chief of marketing services for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, a large but elfin man who decided we needed his help...
...We gave up butter on our toast...
...Hey, can this lady have a box of those eggs...
...Nevertheless, the range of the response and the form it has sometimes taken suggest that the ultimate effect of the issue on the Warsaw Pact countries is less predictable...
...whoever was around at the right time could have them...
...But for now, they may prefer to put up with the situation, rather than pursue a dangerous debate that could provide a definite answer they don't want to hear.tom Heneghan...
...As dollars become cheaper, American goods become more competitive abroad...
...With the Liberals making continued support of Prime Minister James Callaghan contingent upon his holding the 10 per cent line on wage increases, Labor's chances of staying in power for long are at best not bright...
...Perhaps because their policies appear perfectly suited to many of Poland's problems, officially the Eurocommunists are virtually ignored there...
...If not for the fact that the West has become accustomed (some say too much so) to such predictions, the report And a similar one issued only days earlier by the Common Market Commission would have rung alarm bells from Sweden to Italy and from the United States to Japan...
...Much of the Western Communists' ideological outlook is reminiscent of the 1968 Prague Spring...
...The Conference of European Workers' and Communist Parties was not only held in East Berlin last year, for example, but all the participants' speeches, including those of the Eurocommunists', were printed in the SED newspaper and later in book form...
...When my husband, Tom, arrived here in the fall of 1975 to be the Washington Post's Middle East correspondent, there was no imported butter to be had...
...Hungary has come a long way since then...
...Some small shops call themselves by that name, but they are more reminiscent of the corner candy store or delicatessen in America...
...Feast and Famine Cairo There it was before me, the whole array of American supermarket merchandise frozen duck, canned corn, taco shells, iced tea mix, root beer, Hershey's chocolate syrup, apple sauce, bacon, mayonnaise, Wheatena, and a few products I had never heard of...
...Bob was right: Georgia peanuts are better And his were top good to make into peanut butter...
...Ugh, animal crackers," said Elizabeth, who was only 14 months old when she left America and had missed out on such treats...
...That is still much too high to allow for wage stabilization, especially in the hardest-hit countries...
...exports...
...Chickens are sold squawking and executed on the spot in the souk or at your doorstep by wandering fowl merchants...
...A decision had been made to limit publicity about the exhibit to prevent being mobbed by the curious natives who jam every international exhibition here, from books to machinery...
...No matter how much the situation here is improving, the products available are as nothing compared to the plethora at the Meridian Hotel...
...A week later, H. Reiter Webb Jr., the Agriculture Department's man in Cairo, delivered to us a four-pound can of roasted Georgia peanuts, a belated gift from Bob Marlowe...
...We are happily munching our way through them as we ponder the...
...Exiled Soviet dissident Andrei Amalrik wrote not long ago that "an Italy Communist and freer than the USSR would in the final analysis have no more influence on Soviet citizens than Poland, which is also freer than the Soviet Union, now has...
...Intrigued by the display of plenty in a country of shortages and malnutrition, my husband went the following day to find out more...
...The list of imported goods increases constantly under President Anwar el-Sadat's open-door policy...
...After giving boiled water buffalo milk a try, we switched to whole powdered milk, another recent import...
...a mixture of the most varied elements of petit-bourgeois reformism, of 'national Communism,' of 'people's capitalism' of 'Democratic Socialism' and 'Socialism with a human face.' " East Germany occupies an odd middle position...
...He said we must try Crunchios potato rings, which I'd never heard of, and crammed some into my bulging canvas bag...
...American cake mutes...
...Then Sprague popped up again with blackberry syrup and a paperback cookbook for olives...
...But this is exactly what Japan (tacitly) and West Germany (openly) have long been refusing to do...
...But the Party press avoids at all costs any discussion of or publication by Eurocommunists...
...For some time, Erich Honecker's Socialist Unity party (SED) has acted as an unofficial mediator between Eastern and Western Communists...
...Eurocommunism seems almost an embarrassment for Warsaw...
...With annual incomes of well under $300, the poor here subsist largely on unleavened bread, beans, a few vegetables, and sweet tea...
...Although Egypt is a Moslem country, pork is available with a little scouting...
...On the basis of past performance and current data, it states unequivocally that in the second half of 1977 the leading Western industrialized nations who comprise the organization will fail to attain the growth rate they had set for themselves primarily to combat unemployment...
...Local merchants had been invited to the Meridian Hotel to have a look and possibly place an order with the American firms that had brought over the goods...
...In Britain, for example, Phase Three of the Social Contract policy has broken down, and wage restraints have been thrown overboard in the latest union demands...
...Eliahu Salpeter Satellite Reactions Municheastern European reactions to the continuing conflict between the Kremlin and the maverick Communist parties of Western Europe have been predictably mixed...
...Having seen the benefits that tactical compromise and national solutions have brought to Hungary, the leadership in Budapest is apparently reluctant to condemn Eurocommunists for trying to do the same thing...
...Not suprisingly, they are eager for firsthand news of what is going on in developed countries...
...incongruity of American luxury foods in a land of beans and unleavened bread.sydney Coffin LlPPMAN Gloomy Outlook Brusselsthe semiannual forecast of the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), entitled The Economic Outlook, is gloomy indeed...
...Since domestically the East Germans are quite conservative, their flexibility toward the Eurocommunists is a bit out of character...
...All can be purchased at open air stalls...
...While chiding West Germany and Japan for continuing to accumulate foreign trade surpluses, the OECD praises the United States for its projected $25 billion 1977 payments deficit...
...He came home with the titillating news that many participants in the exhibition had urged him to return at the end...
...swollen and rusted cans with faded, torn labels are the standard...
...he has, in fact, often supported the Eurocommunists' right to party sovereignty in the past...
...Of course, the great majority of Egypt's 38 million inhabitants live in abject poverty and could not afford supermarket goods if they were available...
...What is more, they are almost unfailingly dirty: Piles of all sorts of goods tumble over each other...
...You can tell it is a meat day by the uncovered horse- or donkey drawn carts carrying half carcasses of beef, or worse yet, camel...
...Not that I could buy any of these long-forgotten items...
...Inflation will stay within the 8-8.5 per cent range this year, the OECD predicts, and fall to 7.5 per cent (at most) in the first half of 1978...
...In their view, the sharp decline in the price of the dollar was desiredif not brought aboutby Washington to improve trade terms for U.S...
...conversely, European and Japanese products become more expensive on the American market...
...The paper, Neues Deutschland, has also published other such statements, among them a communique from the Madrid "Eurocommunist summit" last March...
...And on July 31, Carrillo himself paid a visit to President Nicolae Ceausescu...
...He gave us gold peanut pins and assured me that Georgia peanuts were still the world's best...
...Now Danish, German or French butter is readily available...
...People living on foreign salaries, on the other hand, do not do at all badly...
...A bite later she was a convert...
...he asked, "and how about a cake mix...
...A France Communist and totalitarian might be no more independent than totalitarian Rumania...
...This can probably be attributed to the memory of the 1930s' economic crisis and its aftermath, as well as to the lack of German self-confidence in being able to steer a middle course between boom and stagnation...
...The irony here is that the OECD report suggests Western Europe's targeted growth rates could be achieved if some of the "locomotive countries, " particularly West Germany and Japan, would follow the U.S...
...moreover, they have consistently condemned the Soviet invasion and supported Czechoslovak dissidents...
...Remember brown eggs...
...lead and stimulate their economies: Increased domestic demand in the richer countries would, of course, spur imports from the economically weaker ones...
...There are no supermarkets in Egypt...
...Here as on other issues, however, the Kremlin does not seem to agree with Amalrik: Even various Eastern European policies toward Eurocommunism have presented an ideological problem for the Soviet leaders...
...Several features of the Italian situation such as a volatile working class and a strong Catholic Church Are mirrored in Poland, and the policies of the Italian Communist party (PCI) therefore have a strong attraction for many Polish dissidents...
...Another kind-hearted fellow offered to drop a carton of American beef into the trunk of my car...
...Hungary, meanwhile, has given them cautious endorsement...
...After two weeks of silence following the Carrillo-Kremlin confrontation, Rumania reiterated its support for each Party's right to follow its own path...
...Americans and Egyptians alike ate eagerly and heartily...
...In West Germany, the most prosperous European nation, "healthy growth" has become a sort of national fetish...
Vol. 60 • August 1977 • No. 17
