From out of the rubble.

GRENADA'S MOST valuable export in 1983, and perhaps for all time, was paper. The reams of documents seized by U.S. forces just a year ago paint a remarkably rich picture the New Jewel Movement (NJM) wanted, in the words of its leader, Maurice Bishop, to "sink the ideas of Marxism-Leninism among the working class." Where those ideas did not sink of their own accord, which was among much of the population, these disciples of Lenin were--the documents reveal--ready with the cement overshoes of subversion and repression. In the end, Bishop was assassinated by party rivals who demanded "firmer Leninism" in dealing with the "low mood of the masses."

The documents also reveal that Grenada matched its narrowly repressive domestic policies with a foreign expansiveness that made it the rising star among new Soviet properties. The Grenadians eagerly pursued this status, expressing disappointment when Moscow did not receive Grenadian leaders with the same pomp as their Nicaraguan and Cuban counterparts. But the Grenadians scrambled for recognition; NJM delegations relentlessly advanced Soviet positions at meetings of the Socialist International and in other international forums.

Although the Kremlin did not leap to anoint Grenada as a full member of the socialist community, aid still came quickly. Little more than a year after Bishop seized power, the Soviet Union agreed to supply free of charge $1.3 million worth of military hardware--the first of three known military-aid agreements, worth a total of $5.8 million. American forces found enough military gear to equip two Cuban infantry battalions for thirty to 45 days of combat. Moscow and Havana may have had some reservations about the durability of Grenada's revolution--similar revolutions, especially in Africa, had succumbed to sudden reversals--but they were plainly willing to underwrite the English-speaking. Caribbean's first Marxist-Leninist government. That the U.S. would intervene directly was the farthest thing from their minds.

Consolidating a Marxist-Leninist revolution is never easy. In Grenada, the papers show, Bishop's NJM confronted both active resistance and hostile indifference. The economy sagged under the weight of centralized planning lorded over by cadres who barely knew their Marx, let alone their supply-and-demand curves. The masses were somewhat enthusiastic at the start, but growing repression and a worsening economic situation were more real than Communist sloganeering. Pressure mounted within the NJM to identify scapegoats. Bishop's murderers-to-be attacked his leadership. A LITTLE MORE than a year before his assassination, Bishop defended himself against charges that he was not a tough Leninist by saying that party members had absolute "hegemony" over every government body and five of eight trade unions. As for the nefarious bourgeoisie, Bishop said, "They are not part of our rule and control. . . . We bring them in for what we want to bring them in. When they want freedom of expression to attack the government . . . we crush and jail them." As for his feelings on due process: "Consider how people get detained in this country. We don't go and call for no votes. You get detained when I sign an order. . . . Once I sign it--like it or don't like it--it's up the hill for them." More than a thousand of Grenada's approximately 100,000 people were detained during the four and a half years of Bishop's rule, and State Department reports document that many prisoners were tortured.

But in the Cubans and Soviets Bishop had sophisticated friends who knew that not every reactionary was a candidate for jail and tortune. The truly popular ones had to be handled with gingerly care. Bishop's most difficult challenge was the Catholic Church. A "top secret" report prepared by officials at the Ministry of the Interior said, "The Church [is] the main potential source of internal counter-revolution . . . if serious are not taken, we can find ourselves with a Poland situation."

Why was the Church such a nettle? A neat summary of the threat posed b y the Church (prepared by Cuban "experts" on the religion question) showed that it claimed the allegiance of 59 per cent of the populace, staffed most of the schools on the island, and was actively countering the NJM's attempts to subvert its authority and pastoral mission.

Listed in various documents is an assortment of provocations against the "revo," as party members called the revolution. The Church had reportedly called for the release of prisoners detained without charge; attempted to publish its own newspaper; distributed documents described as "anti-scientific socialism" (for example, Pope John Paul II's 1983 New Year's message); and purchased 4,365 copies of the easy-to-read Jerusalem Bible. This last was especially insidious, observed one official, because "this means that the Church in understanding the struggle for minds has revolutionized [its] main ideological weapon--the Bible.

Bishop Sidney Charles apparently plotted to maintain the Church's authority and spoke out against the regime. An NJM intelligence report warns that insiders had passed the word that Bishop Charles planned to move decisively to regain control of an infiltrated Catholic youth organization. Then, on January 2, 1983, this savvy bishop told his flock: "The Church is facing its greatest challenge, and, for 1983, the Church will be looking on the youth to be more committed to the Church than ever. There are people who want to dictate to the Church what to do, and 1983 will even see an attempt to crush the Church."

The bishop's prescience alarmed the Ministry of the Interior, where officials laid plans to establish a mandatory register for all Church activities, "remove from primary schools, all deeply religious head teachers by whatever means suitable," immediately introduce political education at the primary and secondary levels, cut back on religious radio programming, and open Marxist-Leninist bookshops in outlying parishes. Documents also mention the hope that Nicaragua might send some priests of the "Liberation theology" variety to confound the reactionary clerics. Party officials even went so far as to ask Vietnamese comrades "how they tackled the difficult question of the Catholic Church." (According to a recent Amnesty International report, 150 Catholic priests now languish in Vietnamese jails.)

That a speck of a country like Grenada could casually ask for advice from a country half a world away is testimony to the heady internationalism that comes with a place in the Soviet orbit. Party officials and army officers attended schools in the Soviet Union and other Eastern-bloc countries. The Grenadians managed to secure military aid, economic aid, or political agreements with Cuba, the Soviet Union, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Libya, East Germany, North Korea, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and other states. The rulers of the little island must have felt very important.

Enhancing the island's value to Moscow was a primary goal of the NJM. In a telling report, Grenada's ambassador to Moscow, Richard Jacobs, notes that "their [the Soviets'] support for us is actually below our support for them." The conclusion did not alarm Jacobs, however, because he believed that successfully courting Moscow would require many sacrifices. Jacobs argued that the best way catch the Kremlin's eye was to help install friendly, "anti-imperial" regimes in neighboring countries: "Of all the regional possibilities, the most likely candidate for special attention is Surinam. Another candidate is Belize. To the extent that we can take credit for bringing any other country into the progressive fold, our prestige and influence would be greatly enhanced."

What effects did the U.S. invasion and the fall of the NJM have? Soviet scholar Jiri Valenta has found in the writings of one Karen Brutents, a leading ideologist in the Soviet International Department, signs that the Grenada operation worried the Soviets. Before the invasion, Brutents argued in numerous articles that the world "correlation of forces" and American defeatism together made the U.S. a paralyzed giant. After the invasion, Brutents revised his analysis, writing that the U.S., "intoxicated with the success of Grenada," had become a much more threatening force in world affairs. The implication was that Moscow must behave cautiously to avoid crossing swords with the U.S. or losing any more allies. If that sensibility has indeed found its way into the Kremlin, the world will be a safer place.