> no. 65 of March 24, 1989) The Congress of Budapest will be delicate and difficult, an entirely political one held under the sign of two hopes: the hope that in Budapest a new democratic spring can be affirmed and disseminated in Hungary and all of Europe; and the hope that the new trans-party and trans-national Radical Party we decided in Bologna to create can be consolidated and take root, overcoming all crises and difficulties. "Spes contra spem". Like all true hopes, these two of a Hungarian spring must also be won fighting against facile optimism and illusions.
The Radical Congress in Budapest arises from the meeting of two desires, the convergence of two facts which, despite the difference in their proportions, are yet equally singular and extraordinary.
On the wave of the political changes begun by Gorbachev, this same Hungary, whose desire and need for democracy was strangled in 1956 by Soviet tanks, has decided to risk another season of democratic reforms. It has not decided to democratise the existing structures of real Socialism as is happening in the USSR (and the events surrounding Yeltsin and Sacharov, the political struggle that has begun there, show that even this is no joke), but to open a constituent period which has already taken a first step and seen the opening of a great debate with the law on the freedom of association. As before in 1965, today too it is the democratic and reformist wing of Hungarian Communism to promote and guide this democratic turn-about.
It is certainly no accident that the first political group to participate with the Hungarian reformers in their democratic revolution is the Radical Party, the party of non-violence and human rights, of the United States of Europe, of the right to life and a life under law. Nor is it an accident that to seize this occasion and this opportunity was a party which after thirty years of prevalently, almost exclusively Italian political experience, history and identity, was the first to feel the urgent need of constituting itself a European, trans-national and supra-national political party.
It is thanks to the convergence of these two factors, so singular and extraordinary, that from April 22-26 in Budapest the first Congress will be held of a non-national and non-Communist party in one of the countries that the Second World War destined to practising Socialism. Thus what was not possible in Yugoslavia will happen in Hungary. It may seem presumptuous and overweening, but we feel that precisely there where the Soviet thaw is imperilled by national and ethnic fractionation and a multi-party system consisting of a return to the scene of the old pre-Fascist and pre-Communist, precisely there it may be a possible contribution and a role for the party of bi-partisanship, of the "Anglo-Saxon" reform of the political system, and the party of federalism and the trans-national organisation of the political struggle. And we feel that the creative force of an impetuous process for constituting a new democracy can give the impulse of renewal and new vitality to the tired and conservative practising dem
ocracies of Western Europe.
But there is also in us the dramatic consciousness that both these facts, equally singular and extraordinary in differing proportions, have in their great potential the risk of great fragility.
We know from the tragic outcomes of earlier springtimes in the Communist world, what dangers lurk in the new Budapest spring. And for our part we know what dangers threaten the life of the new Radical Party. In recent months, faced with the apparently insoluble problem of forming a material basis and organisation for the trans-national party, and of finding enough members and political strength for it, we also discussed closing down the Party - to end one experience in order to seek outside the limits of this Radical Party the basis of a new trans-national party. At the Federal Council in Strasbourg, this idea was set aside. There is neither the time nor the resources, nor any visible candidates for outside interlocutors to make the search possible for a "new party" outside the PR. Once again the Radical Party is condemned to go ahead, to try and make the grade or to disappear. The difficulties have not disappeared. The closing down was not an invention of the leaders in a self-destructive vein. We have
little time and very few resources. We will have to get results within a few months - memberships, consensus, establish headquarters in several countries - things we have not managed to do in more than a year.
In a recent interview published by <>, Marco Pannella (1) said: "In Strasbourg we made a decision that was exactly the opposite of what had been foreseen. We do not disband, on the contrary, we return to the attack... We decided to take to the open sea, hoisting on the masts and yards all our flags and emblems and every man at his fighting post on deck in full uniform. Our Congress in Budapest, during the last ten days of April, will be this: it will be a reminder that that ship has been more effective than many immense fleets and has discovered incomparable horizons and landing places. We are preparing to go there so that others, in isolation, who consider battling foreign and enemy flags, will find a reason to rally around this ship. This time we will use the last penny of public financing, the alms we get, our energy and resources...". All of us will have to be present in Budapest, with all our flags - in order to have the strength to hoist the sails, in order to catch the wind that will impel us towards new seas, in order to give other comrades, Hungarians, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Russians, Poles and Romanians as well as Sahelians and Israelis, Frenchmen and Spaniards, Englishmen and Belgians, the hope that will give them the strength to board this ship.
Meanwhile, despite Budapest, despite this extraordinary appointment with hope, the party has gathered few more than one thousand memberships in 1989.
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TRANSLATOR'S NOTES
1) Pannella, Marco - Pannella, Giacinto called Marco (Teramo 1930). At this time President of the Radical Party's Federal Council. He was one of the party's original founders. At twenty he was national university representative of the Liberal Party, at twenty two President of the UGI, a university student's union of lay convictions, at twenty three President of the UNURI, a national union of Italian university students. At twenty four, in students movement and Liberal Party circles, he warmly urged the foundation of the new Radical Party which was established in 1954 by prestigious cultural figures and political groups of minority democrats. He has been active in the party except for a period (1960-1963) when he was Paris correspondent of the daily <>. In Paris he made contacts with the Algerian resistance. Once back in Italy he took up the reconstruction of the Radical Party which had been dissolved by its own leaders due to the birth of the centre-left. Under his unquestioned leadership the party promoted (and won) important civil rights battles that introduced into Italy divorce, conscientious objection, the vote for eighteen-year-olds, important family law reforms, etc. It fought for the abrogation of the Concordat between Church and State. He was arrested in Sophia in 1968 while demonstrating in defence of Czechoslovakia invaded by Stalin. He opened the party to the new homosexual organisation (FUORI) and encouraged the formation of the first green and ecological groups. For years the new Radical Party organised difficult campaigns proposing numerous referendums (about twenty in the course of the years) for the moral reform of the country and of politics, against public financing of political parties, against nuclear plants, etc. But in particular it worked for a thorough reform of the administration of justice. Because of these battles, all conducted with rigorous non-violent methods of Gandhian inspiration - his Gandhi being neither a mystic nor an ideologist, but rather a statesman both ri
gorous and flexible - he was put on trial various times and was generally acquitted. From 1976 on, when he ran for the first time, he has always been elected to the Chamber of Deputies, twice to the Senate and twice to the European Parliament. He has run on various occasions and been elected to the Municipal Councils of Rome, Naples, Trieste and Catania where he conducted exemplary battles and initiatives. When necessary he has gone on hunger strikes, not only in Italy but elsewhere in Europe, in particular during the course of the great campaign against extermination by hunger in the world. During this campaign he mobilised about a hundred Nobel Prize winners and prominent scientific and cultural figures for the sake of obtaining a radical change in the direction and management of the funds destined for developing countries. On September 30, 1981 he obtained a vote in the European Parliament on a resolution going in that direction and following this analogous laws in the Italian and Belgian Parliaments. In
January 1987 he ran for President of the European Parliament, obtaining 61 votes. At the present time the Radical Party has decided not to run candidates of its own in Italian national elections and is working for establishing itself as a trans-party and trans-national party with the aim of promoting a federalist United States of Europe and civil rights throughout the world.
