Eastern Europe

SOMETIMES, when I read the stories from Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union about how the corruptions of capitalism have set in after the fall of communism, my mind is seized with memories and with wonderment.The stories are all true, I know, and should be told. And there will be many more of them that will have to be reported.But the stories present me with memories of the couple of years I spent living under a kind of corruption that I had not known existed.It was corruption not as a sometime thing but as the sum of society.

WHEN THE COMMUNISTS gained control in Eastern Europe, the transition from capitalism to socialism was technically easy. The new parasitic system simply latched onto existing capital and began to feed.Since the Berlin Wall came down, the ravages of socialism have become clear to even the most casual observer: antiquated factories, crumbling roads and bridges, fouled environments and impoverished workers. It is ironic that socialism, which was violently and ruthlessly imposed in the name of workers, has left the Eastern European proletariat ill-trained, unmotivated, incapable of making ends meet and disgruntled.

THE END OF THE TWENTIETHCENTURY AND THE ENDOF THE MODERN AGE.John Lukacs.Ticknor & Fields.` 291 pages. $21.95.By now it's a commonplace that the Eastern European revolutions of 1989 marked the end of the struggle between communism and capitalism. But it is also true that the collapse of the East bloc heralded a victory for a third contender from the 19th century: nationalism. The ethnic upheaval in Eastern Europe suggests that 1989 was more of a triumph for nationalism than for liberal democracy.

STARY HROZENKOV, Czech Republic -- With only the stars in the cloudless night sky to guide him, Vit Blaho picks his way along the low ridge separating the Czech Republic from Slovakia, his eyes trained on the woods to either side, his ears alert to any unusual sounds."

The Gulf War and subsequent human drama on the borders of Iraqhave temporarily obscured an issue with enormously important, direct consequences for the Western world: Can the countries of Eastern Europe successfully make the transition to democracy, or will they succumb to the anti-democratic tendencies present even before Josef Stalin imposed Communist governments in the wake of World War II?Many observers believe that a democratic Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals is now taking shape.

Washington -- Not so long ago, it seemed to many that Britain's Margaret Thatcher was the principal obstacle to construction of a federal union of the European Community's 12 member states. In Brussels today, those must seem like the good old days.This is a time of trouble for the community. The Gulf War was the first test of its capacity to forge a common foreign and military policy. It flunked. The very effort revealed that there is no common European diplomacy or military policy because there are no foreign-policy views shared by all members.

Leslaw Werpachowski of Poland is going to learn about democracy by working for a Roman Catholic charitable group that provides food and clothing to the poor.Horia Nicolescu, an architect from Bucharest, Romania, is going to learn about democracy by finding ways to develop safe, affordable housing.And professor Stanislaw Szmagalski of Warsaw University has already interviewed organizers of an upcoming march on Washington to learn how to get masses of people to participate in rallies while maintaining control of the crowd so the demonstrations do not erupt into riots.

Herbert Kline, 89, a documentary filmmaker who sneaked into Eastern Europe to film the Nazi conquest and later told the story of the Holocaust, died Feb. 5 in Los Angeles. His 1940 film, "Lights Out in Europe," documented Hitler's invasion of Poland. He also worked with author John Steinbeck on a 1941 film about peasant life in Mexico, "The Forgotten Village."Irwin C. "Watty" Watson, 70, a comedian and musician who appeared in nightclubs and on television, stage and cruise ships, died Feb. 1 of a heart attack in Orlando, Fla. He was a comedy star on "That Was The Week That Was" with David Frost; a regular on the "Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson; and he appeared with Ed Sullivan, Steve Allen, Virginia Graham, Mike Douglas and on other shows.

DETROIT -- General Motors Corp. and the Republic of Poland announced a $75 million project to assemble GM's Opel-designed cars at a plant near Warsaw, one of the biggest investments by a U.S. company in that Eastern European nation.The project -- GM's fourth manufacturing venture in Eastern Europe -- reflects the stark contrast between the fortunes of the automaker's European unit, which is gaining market share and making profits, and GM's shrinking, money-losing U.S. vehicle business.Already, GM has invested more than $800 million in Eastern Europe, even as it carries out plans to shut 21 North American factories and eliminate 74,000 domestic jobs in the next three years.

When the new decade arrived a year ago, the world seemed to be on the verge of an era of peace and freedom. Soviet domination of Eastern Europe had dissolved, with dictatorships giving way to democracy. As the Berlin Wall crumbled, talk of a "peace dividend" cheered those who lamented the growing gap between the needs of Americans and the ability of either the economy or the government to meet them.That optimism now seems hopelessly naive. In Eastern Europe the giddy elation of the first whiffs of freedom have given way to the harsh realities of desperate economies and degraded environments.