SUMMARY: The author depicts the activities of the "Co-ordination Centre" for Central and Eastern Europe, based in Budapest. The initiatives produced and those in project; the activist work; the difficulties; the means of communication; the enrollments in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union; the next free elections in these countries and the importance of the Radical presence, of joining the Radical Party.

(Radical News n.51 of the 2nd of March 1990)

Tanacs Krt. 11, first floor, Budapest. This is the address of the Radical Party in Hungary and of the Co-ordination Centre for the Radical activities in the whole of Central and Eastern Europe.

We could almost consider it the "Via di Torre Argentina 18" of the countries beyond the previously existing iron curtain. A physical place, a postal address or simply a telephone number now widely advertised that has in actual fact become, in these last months, the Radical door of Hungary, Soviet Union, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Poland Yugoslavia Bulgaria.

It consists of approximately 80 square metres in the centre of Budapest, on one of the main arteries of the city; two computers, one telefax machine, two telephone lines and a group of comrades that for a year, overcoming a thousand obstacles, have wanted it and have accomplished it. With Sandro Ottoni and Olivier Dupuis, with the fundamental help of people whom perhaps even the readers of Radical News are scarcely acquainted to, like John Bok or Richard Stockar in Prague, Vito Cezmadiszki in Zagreb, Nikolaij Khramov, Evghenija Debranskajia and Sacha Pronozim in Moscow, Ferenc Parcz, Andrea Tuza, Remo Csok, Josxef Vaoi and many more in Budapest, it has been possible to create a means, an extraordinary possibility, not just technical, of political initiative.

The demonstrations in front of the Italian and Spanish embassies to protest against the rights to information that are being violated in these countries of "real democracy", organized in almost all the capitals of the East; the participation to initiatives for a democratic Rumania before and after the dictatorship of Ceausescu; the campaign for "Hungary in the United States of Europe now". These are just examples of the possibilities of mobilization and of reflection that the Radical Party, trans-party and trans-national, that this federalist constituent has managed to offer to the new, but dangerously sleepy, new democracies of the East. At Tanacs Krt enrollments from the other countries arrive every day via mail. While I'm writing, for the year 1990 there are 21 members of the Radical Party in Hungary (plus 16 pre-announced enrollments); 51 in the Soviet Union; 184 in Czechoslovakia; 37 in Yugoslavia; 14 in Poland.

The enrollments arrive via the replies from the tri-weekly magazine that we distribute from Budapest, translated into the different languages, or else via fax from the "datum-points" in Prague, Moscow, Zagreb.

The lack of the fundamental support that Radio Radicale represents in Italy in terms of information on the activities of the party has forced us to establish a means for written communication with a fixed tri-weekly expiry - Radical Letter - (edited in Rome by Roberto Cicciomessere, with the collaboration of the "local editorial office") by means of which we are trying to solve the main problem that the creation of a trans-national party has to deal with: the communication in ten different languages.

A great amount of help has been provided by the Radical telematic Service AGORA', by means of which it has been possible to establish a connection in real time between main editorial office, "peripherical comrades" and the newspaper's publishing centres, enabling us to overcome the huge difficulties that the great distances would have involved in the production of the Radical Letter. Since a couple of weeks the group of Moscow too has the possibility of hooking up to AGORA' and to send opinion or news concerning one's activities directly to Budapest or to Rome in just a few seconds.

And as in all the (very few) Radical offices of the world the main help in the daily activities is provided by a group of pensioners, intent on translating the mail that comes into the office, or on working via telephone to call for an an assembly or a demonstration; and to help us understanding a Hungary that is still difficult to understand for us, with its strange language, part Baltic and part Asian.

Reading the daily newspapers, not only the Hungarian ones, and the press review of the main facts is made possible also thanks to their help, as well as thanks to the help of the Italian section of Magyar Radio.

Every day, here in Tanacs 11, the succession of the number of enrollments - that is increasing - the publishing, putting into envelopes, mailing of the Radical Letter, the co-ordination with the datum-points, the translations of the letters that come in from all parts of the Eastern world, the relationship with the members in Hungary, give us the the sense and the measure of the enormous difficulties that a party that is and wants to be trans-national and trans-partitical must face.

It is without doubt that the couple of hundred members of the East of Europe will not be enough to accomplish it, thousands and thousands of citizens that will choose the Radical Party will be necessary, citizens who identify with the battles the Party conducts today, like the central battles for a correct and coherent development of democracies. Certainly more in the East than in any other place. In the next few months almost the whole of Central and Eastern Europe will be shattered by the wave of the first free elections: administrative elections in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, federal elections in the various republics of Yugoslavia. What will happen?

The answer relies not on fate, but on the capability, ours as well, of "being there"; in Budapest, as in Prague or Zagreb.

A few days ago we received a letter from from Novosibirsk in chilly Siberia, that said: "I don't know how you managed to get my address, but thank you for having sent me the Radical Letter. I know nothing about your history, about the federalist battle and about the other things you write about. I do divine, however, that today the world is ever more divided, torn apart by thousands of linguistic, ethnical, political and religious conflicts. Perhaps each one of us would feel less of a minority if he had the possibility of having other interlocutors in history and, perhaps - though I hardly believe it any longer - in democracy, in its ritual..."

Enclosed was, out of hope and trust, the signed form for joining the Radical Party for 1990; the signature:

Aleksandra S.

A new "comrade", a simple aspect of the huge former empire of evil, perhaps an answer.