DISILLUSION INFESTS POLISH MARKET

Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Harvard, the economic savior of Poland, is about to turn the same trick for Russia. He's Adam Smith and Lord Maynard Keynes rolled into one.

No one expected Poland to be a quick fix; neither did anyone expect it to be a no fix. Poland's economic system is a broken down piece of junk where the most thriving aspect of free enterprise that flourishes is the opportunity for chicanery. Instead of communist regulation by suffocation, you have capitalist non-regulation by abdiction. As old Charles Keating or the folks at BCCI could tell you, when the free market ideologues remove the surveillance of the regulators, the gypsters will come out of the woodwork.

There are no Polish financial standards, commercial codes or professional accounting. Scam artists abound. Check-kiting is a refined art. If you can shuffle the money fast enough, you can earn interest on the same funds in different banks at once.

Poland is short of modern computers, software and telecommunications by the soon-to-be rich and infamous.

Then there's the overall Polish economy. Louisiana is flourishing by comparison. American investors sit around the hotel lobbies talking make-believe deals that still won't fly. The euphoria of freedom has been transformed into the reality of failure. Democracy has paved the way to disillusionment. In the recent parliamentary election, 60% of the electorate stayed home an abysmal turnout even by dismal American standards. How do you create a market economy and avoid a social explosion?

The political landscape is littered with dozens of squabbling parties. There is no solidarity in Solidarity. The old Communists changed their name, scrubbed off the Stalinist patina, and ran a surprising second. The Friends of Beer Party captured 3.1 percent of the vote. They at least have a platform that lots of people can agree on.

President Lech Walesa is willing to strike a blow for freedom. He has volunteered to serve simultaneously as President, Prime Minister and in any other post of significance. Polish democracy accommodates strong-man authoritarianism. Between the world wars, in the heyday of 20th century liberty in Poland, Field Marshal Jozef Pileudski ruled as a benevolent dictator and the Poles called it democracy. Walesa doesn't have a horse, but his ambition is boundless. A shattered economy and a splintered political process can breed authoritarianism of the right in Poland and, who knows, in Russia as well.

Professor Sachs, having already given birth to the moribund Polish economy, knows that Russia cannot stumble into the free market by pretense or capitalistic cheerleading. There is, in today's world, no such thing as noble, stable and continuous deprivation. A nation cannot take a "cold bath" unto perpetuity. Sachs says the West must come up with an aid package of $15 billion, including perhaps $3 billion from the U.S. He would require as preconditions market reforms, currency stabilization and more.

Without help, Russia cannot make it to a new system. Left to its own isolation and wisdom, Russia is doomed to disaster and distatorship. The well spoken words of Messrs. Gorbachev and Yeltslin are not sufficient to move a giant nation out of its ice age.