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Jon Rust is a native of Cape Girardeau and a graduate of the University of North Carolina. He spent a year of his studies in the Soviet Union.

In his column "Communists feign `democratization'" (Sun., Apr. 12) Patrick Buchanan asks several important questions about the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. Namely, were these upheavals, contrary to appearances, the "most brilliant of the KGB's strategic deceptions?" To support the charge that the revolutions were, indeed, merely deceptions, Buchanan points to the decades-long infiltration of Eastern European democracy movements by communist informers, the dearth of retribution against the communists after the revolutions, and the prevalence of ex-communists in the upper ranks of the new democracies today.

Unfortunately, although Buchanan highlights some significant and often-overlooked information in his column, he is wrong on almost every one of his conclusions.

As an American who was studying in Moscow during the fall of 1989, and who traveled, worked, and studied in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and (East) Germany throughout much of the past two years, let me offer a different perspective.

In early 1989, as Buchanan correctly points out, the KGB and the pro-Gorbachev communists attempted to orchestrate democratic pressure upon old guard leaders like Milos Jakes in Czechoslovakia, Erich Honecker in East Germany, and Nicolas Ceausescu in Romania. The reason for this pressure was ostensibly to strengthen communism not weaken it, again as Buchanan correctly states. However, the evidence is also clear that by the fall of that year, the KGB had lost control of its plan. Seriously, and I am surprised that Buchanan suggests it, who believes that the KGB would willfully orchestrate a plan resulting in the unification of Germany within NATO? Or the massive withdrawal of Red Army troops from Czechoslovakia and Poland?

Rather, to answer Buchanan's question about why the KGB was paralyzed during the fast-paced upheavals, KGB informants were so ubiquitous within the democratic groups, and society in general, that it actually turned out to be a hindrance to action rather than a boon. So much information was coming in, so many citizens were being implicated in those stunning days, that the agency was simply overwhelmed. And by the time it was prepared to act, it was too late except for the most drastic of responses (a la Tiananmen Square).

Then why didn't the regimes fight to save themselves at this point, Buchanan asks, hinting that they didn't need to; they had already co-opted the opposition. The truth is that they did struggle to save themselves, or rather, they pleaded to the Red Army to save them. Only, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet Union refused.

I still vividly remember sitting at the foot of the memorial to Jan Hus, the Czechoslovakian patriot, in Prague, talking with several students who were involved in the demonstrations that brought down the communists there. Understandably, Russians are not well liked in Czechoslovakia. Yet there is a begrudging respect of the fact that when Czech tanks were circling Prague to crush the revolution in November of 1989, it was Mikhail Gorbachev who phoned the Czech leader, saying the Soviet Union would have none of it.

It was this phone call and similar expressions of Soviet military hesitancy by Gorbachev that ultimately paved the way for the bloodless revolutions (they are also the reasons Gorbachev received the Nobel Peace Prize last year). Although it could be argued that Gorbachev acted as he did out of self-interest, hoping to garner the praise of the West and thus the resulting financial assistance, I think the best assessment of the situation is that Gorbachev simply miscalculated. He never anticipated that his policies would result in the collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe. Indeed, this is the same charge that has been leveled against the Soviet president by Kremlin hardliners, who resent the humiliation the Soviet Union has had to suffer the past two years, caused foremost, they believe, by their leader's squeamish indecisiveness in places like Czechoslovakia.

This brings me to Buchanan's final questions: "Why was there no purge of Communists from the regimes? Why was there no de-Stalinization of Eastern Europe?"

First, it is unfair and inaccurate to talk about the new democracies in Eastern Europe as if they are all the same. The situation in Czechoslovakia is gravely different from the situation in Romania, or in Poland, or in the Soviet Union. This point aside, it is necessary to understand that although communism and socialism are now negative words in all of these countries (including in the streets of the USSR, if not yet in the halls of power), for decades this has not been the case. Many honorable Czechs, Poles, Germans, and Hungarians have genuinely if idealistically and unrealistically believed in the communist utopia.

Moreover, many of the most intelligent, talented, well-educated, and ambitious people in the former communist countries were once communist party members even if they did not agree with communist ideology, because it was convenient. Party members were able to travel, subscribe to foreign magazines, shop in special stores, and advance in their careers unlike non-communists (not to mention many other privileges). Moreover, their children, who often turned into the new communists and thus the new leaders, went to the best schools and were admitted into the best clubs and clinics, etc.

For supposedly egalitarian societies then, there were many incentives to become a communist, and many of the best and brightest did. Now with the privileges no longer there, these same people are quick to change. This does not mean that these ex-communists are no longer intelligent, talented, well-educated, and ambitious. Indeed, they are. And it is for these reasons that they are prevalent within the high ranks of the new democracies.

Let me stress, however, that this benign interpretation of ex-communists in current leadership roles is not always the rule. Other reasons have to do with the fact that the ex-communists were able to use their previous privileges and positions of influence to make sure that they maintained a power base. And in the case of Romania, it is clear that the revolution there was a sham: one repressive, totalitarian, communist system merely being replaced by another minus the communist label.

Finally, I would like to remark on a certain point Buchanan makes in his column that is simply inexcusable inexcusable, because it is irresponsible. To insinuate that Czechoslovakian president Vaclav Havel's comment that "the U.S.A. should help above all the Soviet Union" implies that Havel is a KGB dupe is short-sighted, and, frankly, preposterous. This former political prisoner is one of the most eloquent and influential proponents of democracy today. And the line Buchanan uses to draw questions about Havel's democratic credibility is extracted from a brilliant speech to the US Congress, which is all about the human spirit's yearning for democracy and freedom and the moral responsibility to act and not just talk. Moreover, it is a speech that is clear in defining the Soviet Union and its warped totalitarian system as "a source of nightmares," the opposite of freedom.

As for why Havel has refrained from ordering the kind of "running down, shooting, and persecution of collaborators" that Buchanan seems to encourage in Czechoslovakia, the reason is that Havel knows such persecution would divide his nation even more than it already is, at a time when healing and building is needed. Havel also seems to genuinely believe that mankind can rise above its past, and persecution has never been one of man's wiser pursuits.

In the fall of 1989 I happened to be studying in Moscow, and I remember well how the news of the upheavals, which didn't even appear meaningfully until weeks after the events, was reported in the official press there. In short, the official line was very similar to the line Buchanan gives credibility to in his column, that the whole thing was orchestrated in alliance with Gorbachev's plans of perestroika.

It was clear to all of us who were able to read alternative sources then, including the Soviet students and teachers, that what the official press was trying to do was find a way for Gorbachev to save face against the hardliners. A kind of John Le Carre spin was being placed on the events. One day, in fact, this very topic came up in my political science class, and a Russian student asked, dismayed: "Who can believe such a thing? We are losing Eastern Europe, and it is all according to Gorbachev's plan?"

I'll never forget the look on the professor's face when this was said. The professor, a proud member of the communist party and KGB himself (also a very astute, open, and kindly man), just sat quietly. Then he smiled slyly and laughed, "Someone will believe it. Yes, someone will believe it. Because some people will not give up their pride, even at the price of truth."

Strangely, it is Patrick Buchanan who finally gives press here in the United States to the desperate lie that the KGB started circulating, in hopes of saving face, a year and a half ago. Certainly, some of the information Buchanan provides is important. But the lack of context, truly, is disappointing.