Communists: The Reluctant Satraps

The word satellite is still the way to describe Eastern Europe’s Communist states — but just barely. With ill-concealed pleasure, they are asserting their growing independence from Moscow.

Back from Bucharest, Patrick Gordon Walker, the British Labor Party’s for eign affairs expert, says: “In Eastern Europe at the moment, Khrushchev has about six De Gaulles on his hands.”

Right now, Rumania is being the most “Gaullist” in its efforts to set a na tional course of its own. After signing a trade agreement with the U.S., Bucharest sent representatives to Geneva last week, inquiring about the possibility of membership not only in the West-sponsored GATT trade organization but in Washington’s World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well. Reportedly the Hungarians and Bulgarians put out similar feelers. In Geneva, two Rumanian envoys made contact with Common Market bureaucrats, but dropped a scheduled “working lunch” when word leaked out prematurely.

Raw Provider. While Bucharest is changing Russian street names, dropping the Russian language as a compulsory subject in schools and closing the city’s Russian bookstores, Rumanians and Soviet ideologues exchange insults. When Radio Moscow called Rumania “intentionally perverse” in its new economic relations with non-Communist countries, Radio Bucharest replied acidly: “Is it necessary for a country to stop developing its own resources in order to get a certificate of good behavior in the socialist camp?”

Behind the quarrel lies Russia’s conception of Rumania’s role in COMECON, which in 1960 prescribed a division of tasks among Eastern Europe’s Communist nations that would have left East Germany and Czechoslovakia as the chief industrial producers of Eastern Europe’s Communist world. Under this plan, Rumania, with its oil and farm produce, would have remained largely a provider of raw materials. Rumanian Communist Boss Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, wanting industries of his own, said no to Nikita. Looking outside the Soviet bloc, he proceeded to purchase iron ore from India and turned to an Anglo-French consortium for a $40 million steel-rolling mill plant at Galati, in the heart of Rumania’s budding industrial region. Soon Rumania’s trade with the West rose from 15% to 40%. Now there are signs that, in order not to leave the field entirely to the West, Moscow is finally ready to send the Rumanians some heavy machinery too.

A Turn to Tito. What Khrushchev really wants from the Rumanians and the other “fraternal countries” is a mammoth conference in Moscow next fall to demonstrate Communist loyalty to the Soviet Union and denounce Peking. The satellites resist this because they fear, probably with reason, that if Khrushchev can clearly establish his mastery over Peking, he will then try to re-establish his mastery over Eastern Europe. In this dilemma, Moscow last week turned, ironically, to Yugoslavia’s Tito, the man who by his defiance of Stalin in 1948 made himself the very symbol of “national Communism.” Tito knew that only some 50 of the possible 90 major Communist parties in the world were willing to follow the Moscow line against China. Rumania, Czechoslovakia and Hungary might go along with the idea of a conference, but would hardly support a dramatic expulsion of China from the Communist ranks.

Coolly, Tito sat down with Khrushchev, and then agreed to a communique that spoke of “friendship,” “cordiality,” even of “monolithic unity” among Communists. He probably promised to seek support for Moscow among the Communist parties in nonaligned lands of Africa and Asia. There was no sign that Tito was ready to help curb the satraps’ growing independence from Muscovy, whose rule in Eastern Europe remains of course preponderant but is never likely to be quite the same again.