ABSTRACT: The meaning of the Radical Party's participation in the initiative in favour of Czechoslovakia, organized by the War Resisters International (WRI). The demonstration in Sofia staged by Marco Pannella, Marcello Baraghini, Antonio Azzolini and Silvana Leonardi.

(RADICAL NEWS No. 48 of 26 September 1968)

What is the meaning and the political value of the initiative promoted bu the War Resisters International and of the demonstrations which have been staged in the context of this initiative in Moscow, Warsaw, Sofia and Budapest?

Why have we considered it dutiful, as Radical Party, which is part of the WRI, to take part in the organization of this initiative in Czechoslovakia, and why have four of our comrades - Marco Pannella, Marcello Baraghini, Antonio Azzolini and Silvana Leonardi - gone to Sofia, staging one of the demonstrations included in the initiative in that capital?

Amid political distortions of social democratic forces which passively accept (when they are not protagonists of even accomplices) the ruthless logic of the policy of the blocks, and statements of principle on the part of the communist parties, which are important and encouraging, but which do not give rise to to a political initiative and to a democratic struggle, the European Left once again risks remaining motionless, paralysed by its own divisions, by its own uncertainties and contradictions.

Once again, it is up to the minority forces, which maintain untouched their bond with the principles of socialism and of democracy, to break this inertia, to promote a revolutionary political action, to try to influence the events without accepting them as spectators and political commentators.

Amid so many Internationals, which have become diplomatic meetings between parties, tied only to their national interests and incapable of any common action, the WRI has been capable of pursuing a limited but precise objective, proposing to effectively support, within the limits of its possibilities, the trial which the Czechoslovak leaders are experiencing.

It appears ever more clear, after the revolts of Europe in winter and spring, after the behaviour of the Czechoslovak population itself during the occupation, that the methods of direct action represent for the Left a necessary instrument of action and of political expression, capable of upsetting authoritarian structures, and not just the traditional ones of the State and of the economy, but also those which have developed within the Left itself. In the Left too it is necessary, through exemplary actions no less than through mass militant actions, to give back the possibility of a political intervention to the citizens and to the workers, subtracting it as far as possible from the diplomacies of the leaderships.

We cannot further condemn the facts of Czechoslovakia without demanding a practical political initiative on the matter. We cannot continue deploring the so-called delays in the de-Stalinization process, passively witnessing the continuous violations of the socialist legality, the convictions of the intellectuals, the disinformation of the working classes.

Breaking this inertia was the aim of the four radicals who went to Sofia on the initiative of the War Resisters International, of the Radical Party and of the other organizations that are part of the WRI.