Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will begin "cleaning house" very soon among the ruling elite of the Warsaw Pact countries. Based on recent remarks made by Gorbachev in Kiev and at the recent Communist party congress in Moscow, we should see the removal of the "over - 70" crowd of Eastern European party bosses like Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia, Janos Kadar of Hungary, Erich Honecker of East Germany, and Todor Zhikov of Bulgaria by 1991, if not sooner. The "crown princes" to succeed three of these bosses will almost certainly be: Vasil Bilak in Czechoslovakia, currently number two man in the party there; Karoly Nemeth in Hungary, and Egon Krentz in East Germany.
What does this mean against the backdrop of Soviet global, political-military strategy? These Warsaw Pact leaders will be sent quietly into retirement because neither they nor the peoples of Eastern Europe have enthusiastically embraced the "new" Gorbachev reform program. Actually, there is nothing novel about the reforms, which were actually initiated by the late Yuri Andropov and are just being carried forward by Gorbachev, his willing protégé.
Gorbachev's call for stepped-up production in the factories and in agriculture was well received by the communist parties of the East bloc satellites. But most of them have completely ignored the demands for action against alcoholism, corruption, and sloppiness in the workplace - major problems in the Soviet Union, where the political bureaucracy is strangling the economy and driving people to drink their problems away. These social ills are not major problems in Eastern Europe, and programs to deal with them cannot be forced on the people there as the KGB is now doing with great gusto in the Soviet Union. There are more people in jail in the Soviet Union today than at any time since Stalin.
To attempt to close the liquor stores of Poland, Czechoslovakia, or Hungary until 2 P.M. every day would invite widespread revolt. This was acknowledged by perhaps the toughest, pro-Soviet party boss in eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia's Vasil Bilak, who said one could never cut off the Czechs from their beer because it is, for them, like "bread."
Why is Gorbachev so concerned that these reforms take place in Eastern Europe? Why force East bloc leaders to parrot his anticorruption and anti-alcoholism campaigns when they are not a real problem in Eastern Europe? It is because, as always, the Soviets take the long view. Gorbachev and the Soviet ruling hierarchy want the gradual but complete integration of Eastern European politics and economy into the Soviet politico-economic game plan. This universal "party unity," as it is called in the Soviet bloc, lessens the chances of a coalition of opposition forces (for example, Solidarity in Poland) ever forming within the East bloc community.
Soviet planners are well aware that they have been able to control revolts in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany because these movements were isolated and did not spread simultaneously to neighboring East bloc states. Furthermore, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 the Soviets used the armies of neighboring communist satellites, the "five fraternal armies," to put down the "Prague Spring" liberalization movement. Moscow constantly moves to align the East bloc satellites with its own strategic blueprint and to keep them divided against each other.
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