That these same people could utterly change their minds five years later sent shock waves far beyond Poland last week. Lech Walesa, pre-eminent symbol of Eastern Europe’s quest for freedom, defeated by an ex-organizer of the Communist Youth League? Unthinkable. Yet Poland’s new president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, was not just any former apparatchik. In a hard-fought campaign full of slick, Western-style imagery and sloganeering, the telegenic 41-year-old recast himself as a moderate social democrat. Walesa, by contrast, came off as shrill and pugnacious. And now that ex-communists have won top office in almost every country in Eastern Europe–and are expected to win Russian parliamentary elections on Dec. 17-Poland’s election looked like more than a referendum on the personal foibles of the electrician from Gdansk. Just as Walesa’s rise to power signaled the end of one era, his fall from grace seemed to mark the close of another. In the brave new world of post-post-communism, the Communists aren’t afraid of the people anymore.

So should the West be afraid of the Communists? Kwasniewski hastened to reaffirm his commitment to the pro-Western policies Walesa introduced. “I want to reassure everyone that Poland will not depart from the path of reforms,” he declared. President Clinton seemed to take Kwasniewski at his word; he called to welcome the new president’s pledge of continuity. Still, Western leaders will be watching the new regime carefully in the months to come. Poland’s drive to join NATO, which has huge popular support at home, may stall, at least temporarily. “This provides an excuse for those who are opposed to Poland’s membership,” warned Andrzej Olechowski, a former foreign minister.

So far, the Communist victories in Eastern Europe haven’t meant a wholesale return to the past. “All communists are not the same,” says Hungarian writer Miklos Haraszti, a former dissident. The leftist government in Hungary has introduced tough austerity measures to bolster reforms and is letting NATO use an old Soviet base to ship troops to Bosnia. The Polish leftists resent any suggestion that they can be lumped with others–especially unreconstructed Russian communists. “How could you compare us to [them]?” Kwasniewski asked NEWSWEEK during his campaign. “We’re talking about two different worlds.” Some Russians agree. The daily Moskovskaya Pravda wondered last week, “Where can we get our own Kwasniewski and . . . communists ‘with a human face’?”

Yet Russian Communists were quick to assess the Polish results as a harbinger of their own good fortune. “Kwasniewski’s victory inspires us,” said Valentin Kuptsov, a top Communist official. “[It] gives us the right to face the future with confidence.” The polls indeed show the Communists with a healthy lead over their rivals-perhaps as much as 23 percent of the vote. Boris Yeltsin, who once had an appeal not unlike Walesa’s, must certainly be taking note as he decides whether to stand for reelection next June.

Former communists may hold power in Eastern Europe, but they don’t hold a monopoly on power. It’s an important distinction. In Hungary and Bulgaria, former dissidents still hang on to the presidency, even though the Parliament and prime minister are leftist. Poland now has an ex-communist Parliament, prime minister and president. But even there, a bitter Walesa was vowing to keep up the fight against the “red spider webs” and to block any return to old methods. The daily Zycie Warszawy greeted Kwasniewski’s victory with the headline A FORMER APPARATCHIK INSTEAD OF A NOBEL PRIZE WINNER. The new president may not like it. But what’s new about the former communists is that they can abide such talk. .