East Europe in Ferment

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Stalinist bureaucracies tern Europe are facing il opposition on a scale is again causing serious to the Kremlin leaderA campaign was begun last week by the Czechoslovak authorities to forcibly deport several leading signatories of the 'Charter 77' petition for political rights.

Those singled out for the offer of "a free passage to Austria' included writer Ludvik Vaculik, laywright Pavel Kohout, tormer Foreign Minister Jiri Hajek and three former Communist Party officials.

'INȚERFERENCE'

Four other signatories had already been arrested. The suspicion exists that Czech protests against 'interference' by the British intelligence services within Czechoslovakia - based in part on the activity of a British ambassador who left in 1966 - may be one aspect of a plan to brand the 300 signatories of the Charter as pawns of the West.

The moves for political rights in Czechoslovakia have at the present a purely democratic, not a socialist, character - reflecting the middle Biermann class and intellectual composition of this disparate opposition to Stalinist rule.

Some elements of the 'Charter 77° movement will very probably shift decisively to the right in the weeks and months to come.

But the background to the events in Prague is a much wider and deeper opposition to Stalinist dictatorship throughout Eastern Europe, which broke surface with the general strike movement in Poland last June against sharp government-imposed rises in food prices.

Gierek's regime was forced to beat an overnight retreat, but since then it has conducted a continual campaign of victimisations, frameGierek ups and harassment against hundreds of the workers involved and those who have come forward to support them.

Last week two leading members of the Workers Defence Committee set up to defend the victimised workers were fined for 'illegally collecting money' In East Germany, too, the regime's expulsion to the West -last November - of dissident playwright Wolf Biermann was intended as a warning against any form of opposition.

And similarly the reshuffle last autumn, which brought in hardliner Willi Stoph as head of the goverriment, reflected the desire for a 'firm' team to bring on revised wage controls and production norms - changes which, they fear, may provoke resistance from important sections of the East German working class.

The international economic crisis is making itself felt in Eastern Europe, not only through more difficult trading relations with the West, but in the mounting cost of imports from the USSR, especially of oil. All the regimes, in one form or another, are forced to try and curb working-class living standards - while having no intention of relinquishing any of their own bureaucratic privileges.

The defence of workers against the bureaucracy in Poland has received little support abroad.

SANCTIMONIOUS

The same is not true of the Czech 'Charter 77', which because of its potentially right-wing uses has been endorsed by an international array of social democrats, headed Polish riots in 1970. by Austrian Chancellor Kresky.

The Spanish and Italian Communist Parties have also made sanctimonious protests against repression in Czechslovakia - as has the official Chinese news agency!

RESHUFFLE

One Communist Party which is at odds with Brezhnev and his apprentices in Prague, but has not issued a word of protest, is Rumania.

Last week, it was announced that Causescu, general secretary of the CP and effective head of the regime, had appointed his wite, Elena onto the top committee of the Party - as part of a major reshuffle of the top echelons of the Party and state.

It also involved promotions for Mrs. Ceasescu's brother (made Minister of Industry) and Butica, another close relative of the family, also brought onto the Politbureau.