Eastern Europe Populism on the March

By JAMES WALSH

If the age of miracles is over, no one has told Lech Walesa. Poland's ruddy- cheeked hero of peasant origins rode to his nation's highest office last week by a 3-to-1 popular vote. For supporters, the former electrician's victory was -- well, electrifying. As they greeted the President-elect in Gdansk with sparklers and brass bands, Walesa took time to remind Poles of what heroic struggles can accomplish. Declared the country's first postcommunist choice as head of state: "Since we defeated the system without one gunshot or one drop of blood, we can dare to build a new system."

Dare, yes -- but succeed? Adam Michnik had his doubts. In his newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, the longtime Solidarity adviser said he feared that his estranged former comrade, like the sorcerer's apprentice, had conjured up baleful forces that would have a life of their own. The campaign, Michnik wrote, had unveiled a "society filled with mental chaos, xenophobia and aggressive populism, and a longing for the strength of an iron hand."

It was a theme that reverberated last week across the Slavic lands of Eastern Europe. In Serbia a vendetta-minded super-patriot won voter endorsement as leader of Yugoslavia's dominant republic, while in supposedly velvetized Czechoslovakia ethnic jealousies threatened to split the nation. In an emergency appeal, President Vaclav Havel cited freedom's hazards. "The state," he said, "is not endangered from outside, as has happened many times in the past, but from within. We are putting it at risk by our own lack of political culture, of democratic awareness and of mutual understanding."

Havel's moral authority defused a crisis of faith in Slovakia, the country's rustic eastern wing. But his remedy -- asking for the temporary right to rule by fiat if necessary -- differed only in degree from Walesa's ideal of an almost mystically righteous ruler who, as Poland's new President put it, can take "an ax" to obstacles. And Slobodan Milosevic, the steely leader elected by Serbs, won by virtue of his frank jingoism.

Not only did Milosevic become the first holdover from the communist past to retain the presidency of a Yugoslav republic in an open election; his habit of waving the bloodied shirt of ethnic grievances set Serbia on a course of imminent collision with other Yugoslavs, notably Croats and Slovenes. Said Aleksandar Baljak, a Serbian journalist: "Democracy came and knocked at the door, but we weren't at home."

Yet Serbia's balloting was an unmistakable act of self-determination: despite charges of "Stalinist-style propaganda" and spot vote rigging, Milosevic's landslide appeared to be genuine. So it was democracy in one sense. Liberal, however, it was not. "I'm for Slobo because he's for Serbia," said a Belgrade voter exultantly, summing up the ethnic antipathies.

Whether Milosevic manages to retain control in Serbia's parliament in upcoming elections may determine whether the Yugoslav federation shatters. With a governing bloc, he could more easily press territorial claims against Croatia and grudges against Slovenia. Disintegration was not Poland's problem, and Walesa, despite his affection for Poland's prewar dictator, Marshal Jozef Pilsudski, strikes few people as a Volk-glorifying Fuhrer. But in trouncing candidate-come-lately Stanislaw Tyminski, a returned emigre who offered a form of national salvation as easy as a drug trip, Walesa himself could not quite shake off charges of pandering to emotions.

Poles smarting under shock-therapy economic reforms seemed to look to their chief 1980s crusader against communism as an overnight savior. Walesa adviser Andrzej Machalski cautioned, "We have to get people to understand that reality consists of many small problems, not just one big one named 'the government.' "

In one especially repugnant way, Walesa's campaign smacked of darker impulses. During the first round of voting, Walesa boasted of being a "true Pole" with the "documents to prove it." It sounded like a sly dig at Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the target of whispers that he had Jewish ancestors; he came in a poor third. Mazowiecki is not Jewish, but Walesa made no effort to protest that such an issue had even been raised. To show he is not anti-Semitic, a fairly repentant Walesa last week agreed to sponsor a Holocaust museum memorializing the Nazi killing ground of the old Warsaw Ghetto.

Czechoslovakia's brief ethnic feud also illustrated the hair-trigger sensitivities that vex Eastern Europe. Slovaks, who account for a third of the nation's 15 million people, have long nursed a sense of victimization. Wary of Czech domination, Slovak leaders hinted at secession unless Prague agreed to extensive decentralization of core institutions, from the national bank to oil pipelines to management of minority affairs.

Though Havel cited a survey indicating that 70% of Slovaks wanted to stay in the federation, he took no chances. Stepping in with a request to rule by decree if necessary, Havel warned that if democracy failed, "we would be cursed by future generations." Negotiators took the hint and produced a compromise: joint stock ownership of utilities and a rotating chairmanship of the central bank. But a perverse question continues to haunt the new democracies eager to join modern Europe's mainstream: What if the right to choose translates into the decision to say "No, thanks" to democracy?

With reporting by Michal Donath/Prague, James P. Fish/Belgrade and James L. Graff/Warsaw