Resurrecting Ghostly Rivalries

By Bruce W. Nelan

A bronze equestrian statue of Czar Alexander II dominates the cobblestone square in front of the parliament building in Sofia. It was erected by grateful Bulgarians to commemorate Russian victories in 1877 and 1878 that ended five centuries of Turkish rule over the Slavic nation. Since the resignation of Stalinist dictator Todor Zhivkov last November, that statue has become the rallying point for a revived nationalist movement using the old hatred of the Turks to fight new political battles. Day after day, thousands of Bulgarians ignored sub-zero temperatures to gather around it. They shook their fists and cheered rabble-rousing speeches protesting a decision by the country's new reformist government to restore to 1.2 million ethnic Turks the civil and religious rights they lost in 1984. "Turks to Turkey!" they roared. "Bulgaria for the Bulgarians!"

At the same time that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev is facing separatist challenges in several of his country's 15 republics, Eastern Europe is discovering that the ancient animosities suppressed for more than four decades by Moscow's harsh imperialism are rising again. These ethnic and nationalistic quarrels are the products of decades of wars, treaties and cynical deals between dictators that moved the borders of countries but often left their people behind. At the end of the 20th century, national minorities are everywhere. By some estimates, several hundred thousand ethnic Germans are still in Poland and 200,000 in Rumania. More than a million Poles find themselves inside the Soviet Union. About 1.7 million Hungarians live in Rumania, and a few hundred thousand more in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. There are 2 million Rumanians in Soviet Moldavia and an unknown number in the Ukraine.

In times of confusion and hardship, desperate politicians often cannot resist the temptation to use ethnic minorities as scapegoats. The sudden arrival of new freedoms in the Warsaw Pact states at the end of 1989 has brought with it a broadened right to be demagogic and irresponsible, threatening the region's proclaimed goals of democracy, cooperation and stability. "People are able to make decisions for themselves again, and they ) are starting at grade one," says Deyan Kyurianov, a leader of Bulgaria's opposition Union of Democratic Forces. "Nationalism is easy to understand and quick to arouse."

The Bulgarian turmoil is a classic of ethnic politics. Zhivkov tried to solve the minority problem by denying the Turks a separate existence and forcing them to assimilate or flee to Turkey. His successor, Petar Mladenov, reversed that policy. Prime Minister Georgi Atanasov told angry demonstrators, "If we Bulgarians want to be free, then all the people must be free." Last week the National Assembly approved measures that guarantee rights for the Turks, and set up a commission to review the issue.

Neighboring Rumania is emerging from the Ceausescu tyranny with two ethnic traumas. In the west, almost half the country consists of the disputed region of Transylvania, where most of Rumania's ethnic Hungarians live. Ceausescu regularly accused them of sabotage and planned to destroy their villages and force them into housing complexes. Delighted at Ceausescu's fall, the Hungarians still wonder if the new government will treat them fairly. Case in point: the handling of Laszlo Tokes, the dissident Hungarian clergyman in the town of Timisoara whose harassment by Ceausescu's forces in December helped spark the revolt that eventually toppled the regime. Although Tokes was later named to the ruling National Salvation Front, he is still being guarded by the army in a remote northern village. Ostensibly it is for his own safety, but Tokes's father claims that the real reason is to prevent him from becoming a Hungarian folk hero.

To the east lies the Soviet republic of Moldavia, which Stalin created in 1940, when he annexed Bessarabia in a deal with Hitler. During the years when Ceausescu kept his people hungry and cold to sell food and fuel abroad, there was little reason for the 2 million Rumanians on the Soviet side of the border to long for home. Now, with democratic elections scheduled for April, some Moldavians have called for reunification with Rumania. Meanwhile, Rumania's newly recreated National Peasant Party has called for the return of the lost territory. To deflect just such demands, Moscow promised it would open the long-frozen border with Rumania for tourism and trade. Last week it announced that visas are no longer required for brief visits.

After World War II, the Soviet Union bit off a large chunk of eastern Poland and compensated for it by moving Poland's border with Germany westward to the banks of the Oder and Neisse rivers. When the German territories of Silesia and Pomerania thus became Polish, more than 3 million Germans fled or were expelled, but hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans remain. In a series of postwar treaties, including the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, signed by 35 states, West Germany has promised not to challenge the new frontiers of Europe. But Bonn insists that final agreement must await a peace treaty formally ending the war, a step that the cold war prevented.

Most West Germans dismiss the idea of reclaiming their former territories. But revanchist organizations, which include some of the survivors of the Germans who left the east, continue to use the issue as a political weapon. Hartmut Koschyk, head of the 2 million-member Association of Expellees, suggests that a "compromise" with Poland could work out a border "territorially in the middle."

In Paris last week, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl said soothingly that "the Germans have no intention of provoking in the Europe of the future a discussion about frontiers" that would disrupt the Continent. But he again stopped short of saying Bonn has no territorial claims against Poland, insisting that he could not speak for both German states on the issue. With a national election in December, he apparently does not want to risk losing votes to the ultra-right-wing Republican Party.

Some 3 million of Germany's expellees were uprooted from the Sudetenland, a region of Czechoslovakia seized by Hitler in 1938. The power of those old passions was demonstrated when Vaclav Havel, shortly before he was elected President of Czechoslovakia, observed that in a spirit of reconciliation the country might offer an apology to the ethnic Germans who were forced out of their Sudetenland homes after the war. Communist hard-liners in Czechoslovakia spotted the mischief potential in that comment and made sure everyone knew what Havel had said. Sure enough, outraged demonstrators marched in Prague demanding that no apology be given, and Havel's organization, the Civic Forum, had to announce that none was planned.

Yugoslavia, composed entirely of ethnic minorities, broke from Moscow in 1948 but was held tightly together by its forceful first President, Josip Broz Tito. Since his death in 1980, ties among the country's six republics and two autonomous regions have loosened, and an ambitious Serbian nationalist, Slobodan Milosevic, has become wildly popular among his fellow Serbs. But his ) strident chauvinism and the rest of the federation's fears of the Serbs, who account for more than 8 million of Yugoslavia's 24 million people, could be pushing the country toward disintegration. Milosevic has reasserted Serbian control over Kosovo, the historic cradle of Serbian culture and religion but today an autonomous enclave where 90% of the 1.9 million population is Albanian. In the process, he has touched off violent riots and alienated much of the rest of Yugoslavia.

The northern Yugoslav republic of Slovenia, fearful of rising Serbian hegemony, voted in September to confirm its right to secede. By banning a rally of Serbs in the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana last month, the province's Communist leader, Milan Kucan, has become a local hero. Communist Party officials from around the country began meeting last weekend in Belgrade to discuss and possibly approve the creation of a multiparty system for April elections and an end to the Communist monopoly on power. Opponents of the plan predicted it would produce parties that would foster local nationalism and trigger the breakup of the nation. Jelena Milojevic, head of the Yugoslav Socialist Alliance, vowed that Communist youth organizations would oppose "chauvinistic and separatist groups." Said she, in a statement that could apply to much of the region: "Self-proclaimed leaders blinded by hatred are appearing from the darkness of the past and using any means in their struggle for power."

Pope John Paul II, who was born in Poland, has called for "vigilance," warning that "conflicts between ethnic minorities can be rekindled and nationalistic feelings can be exacerbated." The European Community, Japan and the U.S. can help relieve the ethnic pressures with economic cooperation and technical-aid programs. At a two-day meeting in Paris last week, representatives of 27 Western nations laid the groundwork for a $12 billion development bank to channel loans to emerging private businesses in the Warsaw Pact countries. But money without artful diplomacy will not completely exorcise the ghostly rivalries that increasingly haunt Eastern Europe.

With reporting by Kenneth W. Banta/London, John Borrell/Sofia and Ken Olsen/Bonn