Eastern Europe

Former President George Bush came to the Johns Hopkins University last night to be recognized for his role in reunifying Germany seven years ago.But Bush recognized that he was appearing under a deadline of sorts -- imposed by the Orioles.Bush told the crowd at Shriver Hall that he had asked Hopkins President William R. Brody for advice on what to talk about in accepting the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism."I said, 'What'll I speak about, sir?' " Bush told the crowd with a smile.

DRESDEN, Germany -- All over Central Europe, countries are reclaiming their history.Generations of grime are being scraped away to reveal the beauty of Dresden, Leipzig, Prague and other one-time cultural capitals.Statues of alabaster alternate with statues of soot on the ramparts of Dresden's Zwinger art museum. Freshly painted and gilded facades gleam next to gray and dowdy facades of peeling paint, crumbling plaster and exposed brick.Beyond physical renewal, the front-line states of the Cold War -- Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, the former East Germany and even West Germany -- are reinterpreting their history.

Time was when urban grime, shabby clothes and empty shop shelves told you that you were behind the Iron Curtain. No longer. Young women in platform sandals and tattoos flirt with young men with nose rings. On sidewalks and in cars, businessmen and teen-agers are glued to their cell phones. Buskers and beggars patrol crowded sidewalk cafes. One Hungarian family's various members summered this year in Cancun, Corfu and Malta.Eight years after the marvelous revolutions of 1989, life in Eastern Europe seems remarkably unremarkable - downright normal.

As leader of the world's 965 million Roman Catholics, Pope John Paul II speaks to a constituency second only to the premier of China's in size.Like any other head of state, the pope is not exempt from sometimes only repeating the familiar. But there is often something in his message to challenge his audience, and the audience often extends beyond the Catholic community.Two themes stand out in his recent statements: the millennium and the tenuous freedom of Eastern Europe.In almost every address, he mentions the coming millennium as a benchmark for Christianity -- an opportunity for self-examination and reconciliation.

PRESIDENT CLINTON is well on his way toward achieving his major foreign policy objective: the expansion of NATO to include nations once locked into the Soviet bloc. By exploiting Russia's current weakness, he has secured President Boris N. Yeltsin's reluctant assent to what Moscow regards as a provocative move. Questions arise:While it is taken as a given that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic will be the first of NATO's new members, what about the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania?

"Cafe Europe: Life After Communism," by Slavenka Drakulic. Norton & Co. 192 pages. $21.Grandiose abstractions, both communist and nationalist, have brought incalculable misery to Eastern Europe. So it is apt that Slavenka Drakulic describes its unsettled present with the casual intimacy of a cafe conversation, drawing her symbols from the domestic: salesclerks' smiles, bathroom fixtures, dental work, a photograph from 1945, ethnic cooking.The title of this eminently readable collection of essays is gently ironic.

NATO'S OFFER to negotiate a new security charter with Russia in tandem with the alliance's expansion into Eastern Europe illuminates some of the contradictions in Western strategy. It is not only Russia that fears Europe will again be divided, this time substantially closer to its own borders. Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, notably absent from the NATO invitation list, are concerned that such a division would leave them under Russian domination.So too with Ukraine, which is promised "a distinctive relationship" with NATO that, presumably, would be different from "the special relationship" with Russia that has been dangled by Secretary of State Warren Christopher.

AFTER THE FALL of communism throughout Eastern Europe, Bulgaria and Romania went on as though little had happened. The Communists, saying they were Democratic Socialists, continued ruling. People voted for them by choice or from fear. All that ended last Sunday.In Bulgaria's election, the anti-Communist Petar Stoyanov won a landslide victory for the ceremonial presidency, defeating a former Communist. The Socialists (former Communists) still rule under Prime Minister Zhan Videnov, as a result of 1994 parliamentary elections.

PRESIDENT CLINTON has now made it explicit. When NATO expands eastward -- his target date is 1999, the last year of his presumed second term -- the United States will extend to new member nations its "most solemn security guarantee" that an attack against any alliance partner is an attack against all. His appeal to voters of Eastern and Central European extraction in the upper Midwest left his Republican opponent, Bob Dole, in the compressed position of...

Romania has 30 percent inflation, a 60 percent top income-tax rate, an economy founded on profitless, state-owned factories and packs of wild dogs running through its capital.Tenneco Inc. thinks it's a great place to do business.Today, Houston-based Tenneco will announce that it has signed a $50 million agreement to build roads, construct a sawmill and eventually run an export company in the formerly Communist, Eastern European country, company officials said.The deal is "Exhibit A" for the third day of the West-East Conference of Ministers of Economy, Industry and Trade, taking place in Baltimore.