German detente unfazed by Soviet attacks
Bonn
East Berlin and Bonn are both playing it cool in the face of Soviet attacks on East-West German detente. Meanwhile, Czechoslovakia has joined the Soviet attacks - the first East European country to do so unambiguously. And the East German publication Neue Weg, in contrast to other more authoritative East German publications, has repeated the Soviet charges of West German ''revanchism.''
For the most part East Berlin continues to publish the kind of defense of good economic relations with Bonn that in the past persuaded the Soviets of the value of such contact. It adds praise for the contribution to the welfare of all (including, by implication, the Soviet Union) of the East-West German detente.
Bonn, while carefully refraining from giving East German party and state chief Erich Honecker a kiss of death by lauding him too much, continues to make exactly the same points. In Bonn's first detailed response to the week and a half of public Soviet alarm about East-West German relations, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Gens-cher also refuted the Soviet charge that Bonn is trying to undermine East German socialism and sovereignty.
In addition, both East Berlin and Bonn are proceeding with plans for Mr. Honecker's first visit to West Germany in September, according to West German officials.
The latest East German ripostes to Moscow appeared in the issue of the Communist Party ideological journal Einheit released Aug. 8 and the issue of Horizont, the monthly associated with the Foreign Ministry, released Aug. 7. Authoritative articles were written before the Soviets went public with complaints about inner-German relations, but when the points at issue were already known to the East German leadership.
Einheit called on all ''rational and realisitic thinking forces'' in the West to continue ''constructive dialogue'' and to work ''devotedly and consistently for peace.''
In Horizont Harald Norbert, director of the Institute of the International Workers' Movement at the Academy of Social Science under the party Central Committee, argued that different communist parties draw individual conclusions out of their individual national histories and experience. The parties all work together, of course, ''to preserve scientific socialism and proletarian internationalism.'' But they apply their own experience ''creatively'' to solve new problems.
''The international communist movement is and remains a voluntary battle-community of equal and independent parties,'' Professor Norbert added pointedly.
A companion article in Horizont on the anniversary of the Helsinki Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe noted that East Germany and its allies have resolved ''precisely now,'' at a time of missile deployment, ''to do everything to secure peace, reduce confrontation, and return to detente.''
This East German emphasis contrasts with current Soviet determination to heighten East-West tension in response to the NATO missile stationing that began eight months ago.
Czechoslovakia joined the Soviet campaign of heightening tensions with West Germany Aug. 8 with an article in the Communist Party daily Rude Pravo that charged Bonn with wanting to bring East Germany into its state territory.
In a comprehensive but low-key statement Aug. 6 that preceded the latest East German and Czech articles, West German Foreign Minister Genscher had developed some of the same themes as Professor Norbert.