Rival Stalinists fall out

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Ceasescu with Elizabeth Windsor riding through London earlier this year While at the end of last month the political assembly of the antiCommunist NATO alliance at one end of Europe was paving the • way for a new imperialist arms build-up, a major public row on the military budget was blowing up within the seven-nation Warsaw Pact.

President Nicolae Ceasescu of Romania has for a long time been a member of the Pact on terms very different from those the Soviet bureaucracy would like.

As long ago as 1962 Romania forbade other Warsaw Pact troops to be stationed in or conduct manoeuvres in its territory and has refused to allow Romanian soldiers to be commanded by officers from any other Warsaw Pact countries.

Also on more than one occasion the . Romanian leaders have also vetoed Soviet policies in the Comecon economic alliance.

Despite his long history of public recalcitrance, Ceasecsu's new attacks on the Soviet Union two weeks ago were unexpectedly sharp.

Rough ride

They began during a Warsaw Pact summit meeting at which Ceasescu claims to have resisted Soviet efforts to extract an increased military committment from all the Warsaw Pact countries.

After what was reported to be a rough ride at the summit, Ceasescu on his return to Romania orchestrated a large number of public displays of "national support" for his independent stand.

He made a number of economic planning altogether.

It is only a few months since Ceasescu was forced by militant strikes in the coal mines to give concessions in the form of wage increases Romanian workers.

He lives, like the other Stalinist bureaucracies, under thè permanent threat of new attacks from the working class.

That is why the present dispute is causing so much bitterness.

It is not Ceasescu's ironoisted internal retime whice to the stability of the other bureaucracies.

But his "selfish" refusal to shoulder his share of defence spending means that the other already detested bureaucracies must make up the gap by further economic pressures on the masses.

And as far as the Kremlin is concerned if Ceasescu is get away with this, dangerous example would be set for the other Warsaw Pact regimes which are in equal need of any possible Save amensees from the wrath of the working class.

Ceasescu's "every Stalinist bureaucrat for himself" approach is, therefore, a real danger to the Warsaw Pact bureaucracies as a whole.

The rumours that the Kremlin is preparing some kind of military move against Romania cannot, therefore, be completely discounted.

Certainly Ceasescu seemed to retreat at the end of last week from his sharpest anti-Soviet remarks and took his opposition onto the more nebulous ground of a vague proposal for an arms-free zone in Central Europe.

That may have been a reaction to a threat.

And a mysterious statement in Ceasescu's last speech might be evidence that such action was being seriously prepared politically.

Ceasescu complained at such actions in the relations between Communist states as "a support of counterrevolutionary elements in certain countries and the instigation of these to overthrow the government, actions which in a flagrant way violate the principles and the norms of relations between socialist countries, even international law and the UN Charter."

Brezhner with Czech Stalinist Husak PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report