ABSTRACT: The chronicle of the clandestine militant activity that was necessary to prepare the April 19, 1982 demonstration in the Warsaw Pact capitals. The contacts outside Italy; the detailing of the sites and methods; the self-financing: an operation for breaking through the iron curtain.
( NOTIZIE RADICALI No.6, May 28, 1982)
A demonstration in Moscow. More than that: "Even in Lithuania and Estonia" says Marco Pannella... The idea came to Francesco Rutelli as well as to Ivan and Bruno as a reaction to the bitter taste of impotence which was left in everyone's mouth a little after the demonstration of protest before the Polish Embassy against Jaruzelski's coup d'etat.
The issues involved were "broadened" after the meeting with Marco who always envisions things on a grand scale: it was a matter of organising ourselves together with the comrades in other countries in order to hold a simultaneous demonstration in the capitals of the "East". We were to demonstrate within the framework of the campaign against hunger in the world as well as for the respecting of the Helsinki agreements and for the freedom of Poland, of Walesa, and of Sakharov. The political decision had been taken; it was only necessary to... do all the rest.
Bold and hopeful we decided that Frederique should go and spread the "good tidings" in Spain (because of the curiosity of the police the gospel cannot be spread by telephone) and she would go by way of Belgium and France. In the meantime Stefano, who together with Gaetano had drafted the text of a flyer, would have reached the Belgians and the French for a first "accounting". There were to be three days spent in Paris; it turned out to be a week in half of Europe. But the prisons were full: eight Belgians, nine Frenchmen and the help of the English for publicising the affair. We met again in Rome with Frederique too a month later (she brought us the Spaniards - a record!) in order to organise a meeting in Marseille, to contact Germans and the Dutch, to specify the sites and the methods of action, to find the money.
Being in Rome, it was difficult to choose the proper sites in the Eastern capitals (centrally located, near government headquarters and the hotel where we were to lodge so that we should not have a long way to go wearing our sashes, etc...) as well as deciding how to travel (where to leave from, the cheaper trains, etc.) But above all we looked for financing. We had to find financiers willing to pay not only for the trips we made to seek them out but also our passage to the East.
Meanwhile Frederique is in Marseilles on March 1 and Stefano arrives on the 2nd. We hold discussions with the Spanish , Belgians and French about forming international groups, establishing "fees", preparing a dossier. This we intended to distribute the day after the action (April 19) both in each Western country during a press conference and in the East by making use of news agencies thanks to a comrade who instead of demonstrating would take pictures and by maintaining our contacts with Brussels and Rome. We also approved the draft of the letter to be sent to the heads of state or to those who arrested us. In this letter we demanded the immediate earmarking of 5,000 billion [lire] of special financing against starvation in the world and we drafted a flyer in which we urged the populace to demand unilateral disarmament and the conversion of the military budget into a civilian one also for use against the holocaust.
In Rome however we waited for the recordings at Radical Radio and Teleroma. There is a "foregone" atmosphere at the former (when we hear it we will be sitting in prison in Prague, etc...); but Guido pulls out a couple of marijuana fags and the atmosphere changes. At Teleroma, on the other hand, the atmosphere makes us neurotic; Carlo Romeo throws us into chairs in front of blinding reflectors with three minutes for saying "everything". Ivan tries to be pathetic; Frederique with her "French" air is the most photogenic.
In the following days, having completed drafting the dossier and finding the money, our nervous exhaustion ends. Be it as it may, we arrive in Milan feeling relaxed. We shouldn't have! The Spaniards who are reduced to five members decide to go to East Berlin; the French have no money; the Belgians still don't know how many of them there will be; the Moscow must be formed and get its visas in two days, otherwise forget it... However we manage to resolve these problems in two days of continuous discussions and telephone calls. We will also work out the problem of the clandestine transportation of our materials (flyers and sashes and the stuff needed to make them on the spot) for the things we are undertaking on the authority of the European Parliament plan to support our action and our hopes for returning home. At night there is time to type out the flyer matrixes which we will smuggle into the East. Five languages in comparison to which Ostrogothic would be the easiest.
On the 14th Stefano leaves for Paris. We say goodbye to each other warmly even if fleetingly. But things are not over. We have to help Francesco Rutelli - Stefano from France and Frederique from Rome - quickly send a Trieste group to Sophia in place of the Spaniards. Then we have a moment to reflect: in three months, almost without a penny, using the risky structures of the Radical Party alone, we have set up an operation that no one else has managed to do: penetrate the iron curtain. We don't know how it will all end, but the beginning itself is something to be proud of. Isn't it?
