ABSTRACT: Even on the occasion of the Soviet coup, the EEC reacted inadequately and in an anti-democratic way, first choosing a line of "non-interference" and only later adjusting its position. Geographic and political boundaries in Europe are changing, the "tide of the pro-independence revolt" has a tremendous human potential. Understanding this means opposing any possible dogmatic profession of federal and antinationalist faith in the name of the ideal and of the political force of an uncompromisingly democratic, autonomist federalism, characterized by indissoluble bonds with the democratic organization of every "independent" State. In the "democratic" world, party power is replacing democracy, and Europe, with a Left that is dominated by the social-bureaucratic culture, with parties that are made State-controlled by a sort of imperfect one-party system, is growing less and less adequate to respond to the events in the Soviet Union. Thus, the first reform to carry out should be that of the "political subje

cts"; the Party should organize freedom, also within the Party itself, and should be as transnational as possible.

(Komsomolskaja Pravda - 13 September 1991)

1) You are a member of the European Parliament. You do you judge the behaviour of the EEC and of the European Parliament during the two days of the Soviet putsch?

Predictable and traditional, its political logic as irreproachable as it was antidemocratic. "Democracies" have happily coexisted with dictatorships for over half a century, provided the latter restrain their aggressiveness vis-à-vis the former. First with Mussolini (Churchill said "I am a democrat because I am a Briton; if I were Italian I would be a fascist"), then with Hitler and Franco, and later with Stalin and all the leaders of the Communist empire, including Hodja. In the international economic system, dictatorships can ensure the military-industrial complex, the agro-industrial one, the financial one which is increasingly connected to the multinational drug trade as well as the different mafias, an exploitation of the labour force of their people and a justification of their own cost to the societies in which they develop. Moreover, the dictatorial system in the world has always provided strong alibis to the nondemocrats or borderline democrats of the West for the solution of their social and organi

zational problems in an artificial and authoritarian way.

The Radical Party, on the contrary, has always maintained - in theory and in the political praxis of its militants - that democracy is a fundamental right-duty of all individuals and of all peoples, a historical interest, and that it is a duty to interfere whenever such rights are radically denied by certain political systems.

It was therefore predictable enough that during the first hours of the coup, when the plotters seemed to be winning, Andreotti and Cossiga, Mitterrand and Major and even Kohl and Gonzales would choose the line of so-called "non-interference", and those were truly decisive hours. The Radical Party went so far as attacking President Bush's first statements as an implicit help to the plotters in the different Parliaments of the world and before the public opinion. As usual, thanks to CNN which broadcast the images of the Russian people's revolt live to our people, the U.S. were the first to right their attitude, followed by Europe, at a varying pace.

The EEC has missed all the major historical occasions, because the conservatism of the national States, Great Britain first of all and now France, have prevented it from truly becoming the United States of Europe. Thus, faced to the end of the Soviet empire, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the war triggered by Saddam Hussein with the occupation of Kuwait, and - now - the coup in Moscow, the EEC has often seemed inadequate and marginal, while the European Parliament has declined consistently over the last two years, becoming a social-bureaucratic and marginal institution.

2) What do you think of the USSR and of Western Europe now that everything is changing and Europe is changing its aspect and its geographical and political boundaries? Are you concerned about such events or are you optimistic?

3) How does Marco Pannella view the division of the USSR into a series of Independent States? Will this be better for security and peace in Europe, or will this pro-independence and nationalist tide represent a danger?

At the beginning of January 1990, during the Radical Party's Federal Council in Rome, Yuri Afanasiev explained (with the wisdom of the historian as well as of the democrat) that it would have been a mistake to think of halting the pro-independence revolt which was about to erupt in all its perhaps unreasonable and irrational virulence, but also with a huge emotional and human potential. We were deeply impressed by Afanasiev's arguments, which helped us understand the risks of a dogmatic profession of federalist and antinationalist faith, especially for the Radical Party, which has always considered the national socialist, national statist, fascist, national-imperial-Soviet, national tribal plague in the Third World as the source of many evils - including totalitarianism - of our century. Moreover in Strasburg, during the meetings with the European parliamentarians, Yuri Afanasiev and other colleagues of the Soviet Parliament provided further convincing evidence of this with their nonconformist and acute anal

ysis of the mistakes committed by Gorbachev and by the West itself in these last years. Unfortunately, we are the only ones, as a Party, to have treasured such warning and put it into practice. Thus, the West and Europe passed from an indiscriminate undifferentiated and inadequate support of Gorbachev's policy in the last two years to a complete willingness to cooperate with the authors of the coup, in the event that their plan succeeded. What we want to say that it is necessary to replace the centralizing and "federalist" Jacobinism with the ideal and the political force of a democratic, global federalism, abolishing dangerous, radical or impracticable utopias, but also short-lived and opportunist forms of Realpolitik. A reform of the United Nations is far easier than is commonly thought; its policy and influence, or rather, its authority and power need to be based on the charter of the rights of man as the premise for a new order to replace the current "established disorder". We ourselves are perfectly awa

re, as a Radical Party, that the dozens and dozens of States of the Third World which are experiencing a transition from ruthless administrations to democratic experiments are ready to mobilize or to be mobilized in support of a democratic reform of the system of the United Nations, provided they are helped in their passage to a democratic model of development. As proven by reliable yearly opinion polls, the European public opinion is widely in favour of the United States of Europe, unlike the party power which rules the European States. Clearly, we need to prevent the emerging nationalisms from being used by fanatic, intolerant and democratically immature forces for religious, cultural, political and economic reasons. The risk involved is a big one: we need only look at the situation in Yugoslavia, where the West and Europe supported and still support the Serbian national-communism more than the "confederate" and "Europeanist" policies of Slovenia and Croatia (whereas the Radical Party operated in the oppos

ite direction, mobilizing itself in the European Parliament and in several States, including Yugoslavia itself). This is why we support the hard line of an uncompromisingly democratic, autonomist federalism, characterized by indissoluble bonds with the democratic organization of every "independent" State.

4) What do you think of the ban on the Communist Party's activity in the USSR?

It is the same solution adopted by Germany against the Nazi Party or by Italy against the Fascist Party. Personally speaking, I would prefer a series of democratic governmental acts, such as depriving the PCUS of properties and functions which it acquired during the dictatorship, turning them into public facilities for the democratic life of the Soviet citizens (and not a property of other parties); subtracting the passive electorate to its leading class for a couple of elections, about a dozen years, for their ascertained co-responsibility in the regime's criminal deeds; on the hand I would leave it licence to propagandize like all the other parties. In an Anglo-Saxon type of democracy (and not one based on party power, as is the case of continental Europe), with two or at the most three parties, I think there would be no major danger today as far as the administration of the institutions is concerned. Also, if there were any dangers, it would be better to face them now rather than let them grow into totali

tarian or "fascist" forces.

5) I formed my political ideas concerning the structure of the parties and their role in society under the influence of the works of Majakovski, when he states that "the Party is a hand with a million fingers clenched together to form a powerful fist". Your Party seems to have given up the classic structure of the parties, that is, a structure in function of the struggle for power. How do you explain you party's choice?

6) The unrestricted arms trade, the black market of drugs, torture, the death penalty, the destruction of the environment and the ecological disaster, and all the other plagues of the twenty-first century have proven that mankind is incapable of solving these problems. Don't you think the Radicals' yearning to carry this burden is naive and suicidal? Wouldn't a failure (which is almost a certainty) damage the Radical party's prestige?

7) How do you explain the birth of the ideas of the transnational Party? Cannot these same problems, the arms trade, the drug traffic, etc, be tackled and solved by the existing International Institutions, such as the United Nations?

I will get to point, and not just of this interview, as far as I am concerned, but also of the historical situation we are living in. Despite the immediate circumstances, Majakowski was right. After the triumph of these hours, there is nothing to add against the Soviet regime-party. But it is necessary to understand, to know, that in the "democratic" world, party power is replacing democracy.

A sort of imperfect one-party system has gradually transformed the parties in the countries that adopt the proportional, so-called "pluralistic" system into State-controlled parties. In the long run, social democracy has also produced serious damages. It has bureaucratized itself and the States it rules or in which it is prevalent. By encouraging the nationalization of economy at all times, it has ultimately "nationalized" itself too. Unions have become, they too, a bureaucratic expression, a power which maintains itself, after the precious historical and democratic role which they played for almost a century. When it denies such positions, either to remain in power or to restore power, it does so out of political transformism, not out of ideal and political beliefs. Thus, Europe and the European Community, with a "Left" which is dominated not by the liberal, liberal democratic, radical, federalist-democratic Left, with a strong attachment to legality and to the State, but by the socialbureaucratic culture a

lso in its "Christian", populist components, becomes less and less adequate to face the events here, in the USSR. And ultimately, it is more at ease faced to the "Chinese order". In the "Middle East", it differentiates itself only because it prefers to trade with this or that dictatorship, no matter how fierce.

On the other hand, the "liberal" forces are increasingly becoming the cover of the military-industrial and agro-industrial complex (and of their subculture); they cannot control them, they are on the contrary dominated by them. We are no moralists, but if these economic and financial forces (which are productive, but not always) managed to rule properly from an empirical point of view, if they succeeded in combining their own profit with social interests, then we would acknowledge it. Instead, they generate chaos, explosive situations, and they need an increasingly poor and uncivilized Third World, they need a "Chinese order" made of corrupt and ruthless dictators...Above all, the problem of our time is that of a total divorce between science, knowledge and conscience on the one hand, and power and party power policy on the other.

One of the causes of this phenomenon is that the nature and the very structure of the "liberal" or "social democratic" parties or of those who administer them correspond to Majakowski's nightmare. The first reform, therefore, should be a reform of the "political subjects" which struggle in democracy or for democracy. The Party should organize freedom, also in the party itself. And it should not be "national", but, like the problems that regard our life today, as transnational as possible.

This is very difficult, but there is no other choice. The "Italian" experiment we have launched has been extremely convincing. The Radical Party, with its libertarian structure, the total absence of any influence or control on its members, who are absolutely free also as regards the decisions taken, where members buy their membership card - as a sort of "share" of a "company" - like a bus ticket, no longer for religious, ideological, political reasons but not even "moral" ones, with no "wise men" or "guarantors" to express condemnations or judgements of any kind, this party which does not mean to "represent" its members because the Party is simply an instrument to achieve the immediate political goal, which can be a partial goal, this party which refused any public financing for over ten years, fighting against the law that allots such funds to the parties, this "party form" has managed to cause civil reforms of huge importance, to build political-referendum majorities on objectives which all the other parti

es had initially rejected or opposed. By refusing to be a party of power, it has replaced power and authority with influence and conviction; the only precedents of this kind are in the Anglo-Saxon history, with the Fabian movement, or in the U.S. with the great movement for human and civil rights.

We did all this despite the fact that for many years we could count only on two or three thousand members, versus the millions and millions of members of the Christian Democrat Party or of the Communist Party.

We were opposed to small traditional parties which had thousands of administrators of local boards and public corporations in the party system. We achieved this also thanks to the practice of Gandhian nonviolence, deprived of its mystic or extreme aspects.

Last year, the thousands of members in Moscow and the dozens of members in the other republics of the USSR represented a great encouragement.

This "party" is, therefore, a possible "Party". The one Majakowski wanted to join, not the party of his nightmare....

8) To us the political structure of the Western countries represents the model of democracy as such. But talking about the Italian reality, you often use the words "real democracy" in commas. What is it you don't like about the Italian political system? What do want to obtain with your battle?

We must be careful not to mix up ideals with historical realities. We should bear in mind the evolutions. Democracy is not heaven, once and for all.

Party power is an ancient degeneration of European democracy, it has paved the way for the Nazi and fascist dictatorships; likewise, many countries fell under the Stalinist rule also because they did not have real democracy but party power.

The "real democracy" of most "European democracies" has been indifferent toward the plight and the rights of the USSR and of most of the world. They do not always fulfil the democratic needs of their own populations. On the contrary. We defended them with our teeth against Stalinism, against the Soviet empire, against the cowardice of so many intellectuals, against the risks of an irresponsible revolt, against the real injustices of our societies. Our societies have driven the poorest part of the world toward warfare and the purchase of armaments, and now that part of the world is destroyed.

The different mafias have more power than the Parliaments. The respect of the democratic state is no longer part of most leading classes. Above all, these leading classes are inadequate, and do not enable a true alternative. The basis of democracy, knowing things before deliberating, is increasingly denied in facts.

In other words, we want a reform that can guarantee the right to life and the life of rights.

9) Your party is often referred to in terms of scandals, of provocations. What do have to say?

Often our so-called provocations are nothing but the courage to say the truth. Our humanism contains the culture of that which is "different", which the majorities consider "different". We wanted to bring all that was covered by darkness, by clandestinity, out into the light. We believe it is necessary to translate ideas, tolerance, love, into facts, and no longer consider them as private facts.

We practice tolerance, especially in favour of our "enemy", and the force of freedom against those who deny it. If, in order to fight them, we became even partly like them, then they would have won, and we would be their heirs instead of an alternative to them.

10) What are the economic means that enable the Radical Party to exist and operate?

Our balances are strictly public, and constantly updated. If we consider the contributions of our members, those given by our members of Parliament and - for this year - public contributions, we have about £5 million. If we sold our headquarters in Rome, Radio Radicale and all our assets, we could double that sum. This money is entirely invested in the diffusion of this project of a transnational and transpartisan party, of political nonviolence, of the democracy of freedom, of ecology. Clearly, with every new day, this capital of fraternity which few thousand Italians and few hundreds of non-Italians give us gets smaller and smaller. We hope it will result in a good investment, enabling millions and millions of people to choose to enact the hopes of this new humanism which we all feel inside. I have said it before: if thousands of new friends joined the party - we confide in the uncompromising democrats of the former communist empire (who know that it is not rhetorical to say that freedom and democracy are

essential for the life of each and all) - this hope will come true, it will not have been a vain hope.

11) Tell something about yourself. How did you form your ideas, your Weltanschauung?

It is such a boring subject!

Only our work can say something meaningful about us. Especially once we're gone. Our enemies are nothing but the testimony of that which we could have been ourselves.

As a nonviolent and a lay person, as all my radical companions, I believe that the means influence and foreshadow the ends, and that it is not true that the end justifies the means.

As to my ideas, I have but one idea in my head: if dozens of thousands of new members do not join us now in the USSR, we won't make it.

There will be no Radical Party.