ABSTRACT: An account of the nonviolent action carried out in Sofia by four radical militants (Marco Pannella, Marcello Baraghini, Antonio Azzolini, Silvana Leonardi) as part of the initiative promoted by the "War Resisters International" in several capitals of Eastern Europe to protest the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the army of the Warsaw Pact. According to the radicals, the European communists, socialists and democrats should do more than simply condemn the Soviet intervention. They should endeavour to "directly influence the events by adopting any political initiative that can help the Czechoslovakian leaders in their ordeal, and the socialist world to rid itself of the authoritarian and militarist structures that are the basis of the occupation"

(L'ASTROLABIO, 6th of October 1968)

Sofia, September 24. In the central Stomboliski street, within a stone's throw of the Balkan Hotel, three men and a young woman about twenty meters apart are handing out flyers. It's five p.m., a rush hour for the capital of Bulgaria. Workers are coming out of the factories, civil servants from the offices. All of them take the proffered flyers with a combination of curiosity and courtesy. The attire of the four - sweaters, blue jeans and mini skirt - dispels any doubts about the fact that they are Westerners. The contents of the flyers (of two sorts) are even more unambiguous. One type contains three brief sentences in Bulgarian: "enough with NATO, enough with the Vietnam war, enough with the occupation of Czechoslovakia". The other contains a long appeal in Russian and German to the countries of the Warsaw Pact, urging them to withdraw their troops from the territory of Czechoslovakia. Hundreds of flyers are distributed and carefully read even by soldiers and traffic policemen. A good fifteen minutes elap

se before a man and a woman in plain clothes sally forth and block the distribution. The man grabs the youngest of the four by the scruff of the neck, spits in his face yelling "fascist" several times. The young man's reply is prompt: he smiles broadly, shakes his head and says, "no, no, socialist". The four are Italians. They are: Marco Pannella, 38, journalist, former secretary of the Radical Party; Marcello Baraghini, 24, freelance journalist, among the leaders of the radical party; Antonio Azzolini, 25, university student, member of the directorate of the radical party's Rome federation, and Silvana Leonardi, 28, teacher, libertarian socialist. Their action is not isolated. At the same hour, on the same day, other groups of young people are distributing similar flyers in Moscow, Warsaw and Budapest. The initiative is promoted by the War Resisters International, an American pacifist organization that has long been active in supporting political deserters and draft-dodgers in the United States.

"Operation Eastern Europe". The WRI is in a strong position. It can distribute flyers in Eastern Europe to protest the occupation of Czechoslovakia because its stance and its action with regard to the American aggression of Vietnam are known worldwide. The organization of the Conference of Stockholm on Vietnam of July 1967 and the upcoming mobilization of European pacifists against the NATO headquarters in Brussels are only two examples of its activities. Equally exemplary is the most recent history of the president of the WRI, the Briton Michael Randle, sentenced to 18 months of prison in 1961 for organizing a demonstration at the base of the U.S. bombers in Whethersfield, and to one year in 1976 for taking part in the occupation of the Greek embassy in London, immediately after the colonels' military coup. As to the volunteers of "Operation Eastern Europe", we need only say that in Moscow the distribution of flyers was carried out by the American Vicki Rovere, who was arrested more than once in the U.S. fo

r protesting against nuclear tests, and by the Briton Andrew Papworth, organizer of antimilitarist campaigns in the U.S. bases in Great Britain. In Budapest it was done by the American Bob Eaton, captain of the quaker "Peace Ship" that transported supplies and medication to Haiphong last year for the combatants in Vietnam, and by the Indian Satitsh Kumar, Nehru award (soviet) for literature, who was welcomed in the Soviet Union as a national hero in a famous march for disarmament from Calcutta to Washington.

The Italians' record is no less rich. Their police records document a long list of offences committed throughout their political activity as left-wing militants. But most important of all, the radical party was the first European left-wing group to protest with banners and flyers in unambiguous socialist style against the occupation of Czechoslovakia. At the end of eleven long days of hunger strike to protest the event, the radical party promoted the "Anti-Atlantic Committee for Czechoslovakia" endorsed by several personalities and militants of the Italian left such as Riccardo Lombardi and Wladimiro Dorigo. The radicals' views on the Prague events is that the European communists, socialists and democrats should do more than just condemn the Soviet occupation, though this is in itself a commendable fact. They should try to actively influence the events, adopting all political initiatives that can help the leaders of Czechoslovakia in their ordeal and help the socialist world rid itself of the authoritarian a

nd militarist structures that are the basis of the occupation.

The War Resisters--which the radical party endorses in Italy together with the Nonviolent Movement for Peace--shares the same opinion. Thus, the objectives of the initiative were divided into four points: "1) respond to the Czechoslovakian people's appeal that called for an international action to back its cause; 2) break the barrier of silence and distorted information on the events in Czechoslovakia; 3) prove that opposition to the occupation is deeply felt by the Western socialist and pacifist movements; 4) sympathize with the open and courageous protests carried out in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland and in Hungary against the authoritarianism of the leaders". Thus, on September 22, Pannella, Baraghini, Azzolini and Silvana Leonardi left Rome with bags loaded with flyers headed for Sofia in transit for Istanbul, as they told the customs officers and policemen.

The four reached Sofia on the evening of the 24th. Only Silvana can speak a few words of Russian, barely enough to make something out of the mysterious Cyrillic characters that are everywhere. They look for a cheap hotel and spend some time trying to become familiar with the city's centre. Then they go to bed. On the following day they divide their tasks. During the whole morning, Marcello and Antonio walk around Sofia, leaving a few thousand flyers on benches, in mailboxes, in bars and restaurants, while Marco and Silvana write to the WRI and draft an appeal to the Bulgarian Communist Party's central committee. They never manage to send this appeal, however, because no one in Sofia seems to know the address. Early in the afternoon they do some more clandestine distribution and at five p.m. they go to the demonstration in Stomboliski street.

The security forces at work. The three men are stopped and taken to a police station. Silvana manages to distribute flyers for ten more minutes before having a verbal dispute with a plainclothes police officer who seizes the package. Then she seems to be forgotten, goes to the station where she waits six long hours before being stopped. Finally she is arrested in the middle of the night on a train to Belgrade. The police officers' first reaction is one of surprise. Who the hell are these four troublemakers? They read the material in three languages over and over. They want to know whether they are part of an anti-socialist international organization of fascists, of agents from Czechoslovakia. Then the security forces take over - four unequivocal officials in dark raincoats that take the four by car to the outskirts of Sofia, to the headquarters of the secret police, where they are detained one more day and eventually expelled from the country.

During 24 hours they are constantly submitted to polite interrogations. In fact, the matter is handled by the top officials of the service with the cooperation of an interpreter. From time to time the interpreter reports to an official. Shortly before they are released, a third person in plain clothes comes in and kindly asks them whether his officials have been sufficiently polite. The thesis of the four is simple. They say, "We are radicals, we are socialists. We believe we have committed no crime because we confide in the fact that the Constitution of a socialist country must necessarily guarantee anyone the right to express his opinion. We firmly oppose the U.S. aggression in Vietnam and the policy of military blocks. For this same reason we condemn the intervention of the troops of the Warsaw Pact in Czechoslovakia". The official replies by insisting on Moscow's official position on the counter-revolution underway in Prague, and accuses, "You have come here to interfere with the domestic affairs of a so

cialist country". The scene is not devoid of amusing details. When Pannella touches on the positions of the Italian and French communist parties on Czechoslovakia, he is interrupted by laughing and jeering, and the unmistakable equivalent of "fine parties, they are!". Another official tries to convince Silvana Leonardi that the President of the Republic of Czechoslovakia himself, General Svoboda, asked for the intervention of the Soviet troops. "We saw him with our own eyes on TV", he adds. "It is you Westerners who are badly informed".

Then the four are unexpectedly taken into a room full of journalists, radio correspondents, TV operators. It is a press conference organized by the secret services to show the Western provokers to the people. Pannella refuses to answer the questions of the representatives of the Bulgarian press. "In my country" - he says - "it is those who call the press conference who answer the questions. Therefore I have nothing to say. In fact, I do have some questions to ask, but I don't think you want to answer". The other three accept the odd interview and explain once again the reasons for their action.

The last act is the expulsion. Big dark automobiles escort them two at a time to the border with Yugoslavia. The "Italian criminals" are told never again to return to Bulgaria. They hitchhike to Belgrade and meet again there. The groups operating in Moscow, Warsaw and Budapest suffer the same treatment. The position of the militants in Hungary is more complicated, because they have been sided during the demonstration by several Hungarian students, and they risk being tried for subversive activities for this reason. But they are eventually released.

"Il Tempo" is right. Once the venture is concluded, there are two conclusions to draw. First of all, the cost of the operation has been practically nil. Obviously, there was the risk that the volunteers from Sofia, Moscow, Warsaw and Budapest could be tried and sentenced to imprisonment. But none of this has happened. After all, the price of one or two days of compulsory hospitality in the palaces of the secret services can be considered negligible. This confirms the validity of individual and autonomous political initiatives that come from the base and are free from the hesitations that characterize major political parties. Also, the success of the operation was unquestionably greater than expected. In Bulgaria alone, the four managed in a few hours to circulate over 5,000 flyers that were presumably read by several thousand citizens, while most of the population was reached by the information which the papers, the radio and television provided, albeit in a distorted way. Anyone who had had even a quick loo

k at the flyers was bound to make a comparison, without considering the trouble for the heads of the Bulgarian secret service and the echo of the event in the Western public opinion. An excellent result, for a small group that made its way to Sofia with only a pair of blue jeans and a bag full of flyers.

One last consideration concerns the public opinion and the media in our country. Elsewhere, papers gave ample coverage of the event, while the volunteers of the WRI were constantly filmed by television cameras. Here in Italy things were slightly more subdued, but people understood that the initiative came from the left and that it was a pacifist and socialist initiative. And this is ultimately the most important result. "The organizers of the demonstration, who have so far made themselves known for their daily anti-West actions that benefited the U.S.S.R.'s policy alone, openly express the concern for the noxious effects of the invasion of Czechoslovakia on international communism, so that the demonstration itself takes on the characteristics of a pre-made alibi...The contents of the flyers themselves reveal that the radicals' and their supporters' chief concern is that the Russian action make the West stronger. Those flyers state that the unjustified invasion of Czechoslovakia will embitter the Vietnam war,

enhance NATO and favour right-wing candidates in the U.S. elections". In its own way and with its own language, "Il Tempo" is damn right.