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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, AUGUST 7, 1981
PAGE 12
rather submit to Soviet domination than defend democracy and risk nuclear
war, the respected Allensbach Institute says in a report on a public opinion
poll. The institute reported 48 percent of 1,300 people questioned in May
said it was more important to preserve peace than risk a nuclear holocaust in
defense of democracy.
Actually, the extent of "better Red than dead" sentiment this year was less
than Allensbach's findings in surveys in 1976 and 1979, when 52 percent put
peace ahead of resistance to the Russians.
But the findings, reports AP from Bonn, "come amid growing differences be
tween the West German government and the Reagan Administration over defense
spending and relations with the Soviet Union."
But if Bonn is giving Washington bad dreams, Warsaw is giving Moscow night
mares.
The Polish internal political revolution--compounded by the mounting crisis
over food shortages--confronts the Soviets with� agonizing no-win situa
tion. Considering what Moscow did in Czechoslovakia in 1968, it is almost
Incredible to comprehend how far Soviet patience has stretched with regard
to Poland--a far more strategic satellite, sitting astride the traditional
northern continental invasion route. Thus Poland is the keystone to both
the Soviet Union's defense as well as its forward position (combined with
East Germany) confronting NATO.
Political reforms have occurred at a dizzying speed in Poland during the
year since the Gdansk shipyard demonstrations. Yet every change leads only
to demands for more.
No one could possibly have foreseen a year ago that Moscow would tolerate the
formation of a free trade union movement--in a supposedly "worker's state."
Neither could anyone have foreseen that delegates to a Communist party con
vention would be selected by secret ballot--nor that the party boss himself
at the congress would be selected by the same process.
Moscow, bogged down in Afghanistan and fearful of the grave consequences of
direct intervention in Poland, has gritted its teeth and permitted all this
to take place.
The Poles, of course could still bring Soviet wrath down on them if their
revolution gets out of hand, if the Solidarity union fails to moderate its
demands--especially so now, with the need to increase both prices and na
tional output. Flora Lewis of the NEW YORK TIMES writes:
If the Poles hold their cool, and the Russians hold their tanks, and the
Western banks hold their i.o.u.'s, then in a few years Poland may be
able to demonstrate that there is a nonviolent way out of Soviet
imposed dictatorship.•••Then the rest of Eastern Europe will surely
press to catch up.
The coming generation of Soviet leaders cannot
remain immune from the hopes•.•.
Whatever happens, though, the clock can't be put back.
One day
Warsaw's special party congress, so ambiguous now, is bound to appear
as an extraordinary milestone in the history of Communism. A transfor
mation is coming, though no one can yet say whether it will be pacific
or desperately destructive.