Freedom to Travel

Warsaw radio called it "an agreement without precedent in the world" --an exaggeration, of course, but almost a forgivable one. What the radio referred to was an agreement this month between Poland and East Germany allowing their citizens to visit each other's countries without the tedious exit formalities, border checks and stringent currency controls (90-c- a day for Polish tourists) that had made travel between Communist countries since World War II almost as difficult as getting to the West.

Henceforth East German and Polish travelers--and, as of last weekend, East Germans and Czechoslovaks --can cross their respective borders with only an identity card, in much the same way that Western Europeans travel freely in the Common Market.

The response was instantaneous. Within four days after the new regulations went into effect along the Oder-Neisse frontier, 15,000 Poles trooped into East Germany, snapping up cameras, household appliances and electric shavers, which are almost impossible to buy at home. Going the other way, 90,000 East Germans invaded Polish grocery stores to take advantage of that country's lower food prices, bought thousands of wicker baskets and cleaned out the stock of blue jeans in the port of Szczecin (formerly Stettin).

Warm Welcome. The new ease of travel is a by-product of the recent four-power Berlin agreement (TIME, Sept. 13), which guarantees access between West Berlin and West Germany and allows West Berliners to travel with relative freedom to East Germany and to East Berlin. The accord, however, contained next to nothing for East Germans, and their complaints trickled up to Communist Party Chief Erich Honecker. During a Warsaw Pact summit meeting last September, he proposed that travel restrictions be eased within the Communist bloc. The suggestion was warmly welcomed by Warsaw, which is anxious to avoid a repetition of the disastrous workers' riots of December 1970 and by the Czechoslovak government, which has been plagued by massive popular discontent ever since the Soviet invasion of 1968.

By mid-April the new rules will also apply to travel between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Other Eastern European countries are rapidly falling into line. Hungary announced two weeks ago that its citizens will be issued a special passport, good for travel within the bloc and valid for five years. East Germany and Rumania plan to waive visas for each other's citizens in time for a summer rush to Rumania's Black Sea resorts, and Poland and Bulgaria are negotiating a similar agreement.

Eastern Europeans generally have more money to spend than opportunity to spend it, and the new freedom to travel--even within the bloc--is a major concession, for which the governments will reap some popular credit. But there may be a few unexpected side effects. Polish citizens, for instance, will be able to see Western television on East German sets, and will probably return home discontented after they see the range of goods available in the shops of more prosperous East Berlin.

By contrast, East Germans will find in Poland a relative freedom of speech that they cannot enjoy at home. Besides nonaligned Yugoslavia, the only other country to remain outside the new arrangements is the Soviet Union itself, whose citizens remain less free to travel than those of any other nation in the Warsaw Pact.

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