ABSTRACT: Following is a document concerning the "Radical Party's direct nonviolent action on the front of democracy, peace and freedom, together with the Croatian defenders of Osijek", by Marco Pannella, Roberto Cicciomessere, Sandro Ottoni, Olivier Dupuis and Renato Fiorelli, all of whom are carrying out an unarmed front line service among the defenders of the cities and populations of Croatia.

Rome, 26 December 1991

1) The Radical Party sets itself the institutional objective of organizing, for the first time in the political and social life, nonviolence as a political party, that is, as part and force in conflicts, such as to be able to win or be defeated; and no longer, as it has done throughout history, of establishing a force of testimony, of mere reaction or of withdrawal in supporting the "violence of the aggressed" or "the closest to legality and democracy".

2) For this purpose, the internationalist, transnational and transparty peculiarity of the Radical Party is absolutely inalienable. On the other hand, this characteristic is equally co-essential to any other vital and fundamental struggle of our time and of our society. No Reform of politics, no true policy of Reform can be honestly pursued without this kind of political and social subject, which is necessary though insufficient for the pursuit of ideals of democracy, freedom, justice and peace.

3) The Radical Party has come to believe that the condition for such force to become adequate to the general, ideal and political goal is the organized reality of at least 50.000 militants throughout the world, distributed at random but organized according to the criteria and the rules which are typical of the Radical Party. Such reality, however, if extremely remote, in terms of quantity if not of time.

This is why the Radical Party's chief task is that of insisting in the construction of the transnational and transparty reality, and nothing should jeopardize this priority.

4) Nonetheless, the characteristic of the Radical Party is also that of not being and not wanting to be the exclusive force of representation and partisanship of its members. On the contrary, it wants to be an instrument, a tool for the achievement of precise objectives, ambitious as they may be or appear. Therefore, those who are (also) Radicals of the Radical Party should not or cannot simply assume the responsibilities and militancies of the Radical Party. On the other hand, the Radical Party's autonomous interest in supporting those individual initiatives (or the initiatives taken in the context of other organizations) taken by part of its members which are directly interesting for the pursuit of its objectives, is evident.

5) The choice of a new symbol, the expression of transnationality and nonviolent-political inspiration, turns out to be more and more adequate with respect to the urgencies and needs of our society and of our time. This is no "intuition", though such intuitions are many and acknowledged to be immensely fecund from a philosophical and cultural point of view. The question is going beyond, in the duration (the "shape of things" according to Bergson) and in the non-individualist personality (Gramsci's "collective intellectual"?), overcoming the divorce between science and conscience on the one hand and politics and power on the other, which is characteristic of our time and of any other time of major human crises. Temporal adequacy, political and individual integrity, represent an additional and independent reason of the philosophy of praxis which can be traced, from a historical and factual point of view, in the existence of the Radical Party. On the other hand, for two decades the "old" Radical Party had under

lined the characteristic of a successful "segment of theory of praxis" of its Statute.

6) The front of "former Yugoslavia" could represent a factor of recovery, of explosive, implosive and under many aspects entropic strengthening of the political culture of the leading classes and of the populations which has marked the concrete history of the century, as well as the tragic moments of contrast which have divided and united it. There is also a deep form of unity between politics (not the ideology, not the ideals, not the culture, but the subculture, in its strict and not disparaging meaning) which arms itself with Nazi-, Communist-, "Cambodian"-style exterminations, and the politics of the "carpet bombings", of the "terrorist" bombings against the civilian and defenceless populations, right down to the use of the atomic bomb to "accelerate" the imminent end of the conflict on the part of the "free world"; contradictory (but we we ignore whether "only" in a Hegelian way) with respect to the principles for these as "inborn" for the others.

7) The "free world" (the world which is effectively, historically and politically such) has carried out, throughout the century, a strategy vis-à-vis the "totalitarian" world and worlds. The core of this strategy was the "bond of noninterference". The free world has always pursued a profitable form of coexistence for its dominant national or economic interests, for its leading class, with the totalitarian world, which has often been considered as a necessary and appropriate form for the "other" populations. The free world has always decided to intervene when the conflicts were already under way. Generally speaking, the totalitarian camp has been offered the guarantee of a defence of its internal stability, with the claim that this would guarantee an "international order" which often corresponds to a classification through pseudo-Taylorian functions or operations of regions and regimes. This way, democratic populations and oppositions (emblematically saving, from a physical point of view, a few selected "diss

idences") have been constantly and as a rule (with its rare exceptions) sacrificed to the idol of the "national sovereignties", including "revolutions". In this sense, only the Italian Radical Party, with its nonviolent and democratic contents, has provided, for at least two decades, from 1965 on, an alternative "action", with was above all symbolic and emblematic, with its "direct nonviolent actions" in totalitarian countries, especially in the communist empire; and this because the strategy of pure power and contempt for the fundamental human rights of the oppressed populations has been more rigorous toward the communist world than toward the national expressions of "fascism". The only precedent is the behaviour, during the thirties, with regard to the resistible rise of Nazism and fascism.

8) On the front of "former Yugoslavia", therefore, the demons of the century seem to represent themselves with all their force and systematicness, as a demonstration of the recovery of the old politics of the "free world" for neo-totalitarian, militarist and antidemocratic solutions in the former U.S.S.R. as in the immense empire of the Chinese totalitarianism, and, also, in important areas of the South of the world. Faced to the repetition of the economic and social crises of the post World War I period until 1940, and their exacerbation on a global scale, new impulses will arise thanks also to the demographic "atomic bomb" and to the environmental emergency, for which the fundamentalist answer could soon represent the only feasible answer for an ademocratic and falsely efficient world and culture.

9) It is unquestionable that the focus of war and oppression sparked by Belgrade, by a regime with strong racist, chauvinist, populist, violent and oppressing characteristics and with a putschist army with Bolshevik roots and a military-fascist ideology as its main weapon, was strongly supported, in 1991, in facts and sometimes even legally by the European Community as a whole, by the single powers of the E.C. (with the partial and tardy exception of Germany) as well as by dominant lobbies of the financial-military-industrial complex, traditionalist by inspiration, and by the socialist International. The blackmail of an "otherwise total war" on the part of Belgrade was taken as a reason for the "Western" policy and for the policy of the U.S.S.R. itself, just as in the thirties for Hitler, Stalin Mussolini, Franco and - later on - the dictatorial system of the South of the world.

10) The strategy is simple, eloquent and obvious for anyone who refuses to deliberately cover his eyes. If the Russian and former Soviet winter, with its frightful economic, social and institutional crisis, with the crisis of nationalisms fueled by hate for the Jacobin and totalitarian "federalisms", which are antifederalist at their core as they are antidemocratic and antiliberal, will erode the position and the power of Yeltsin and of his momentary allies too, there will be no other choice but letting the Soviet army, partially disintegrated yet united by its involvement in the economic and social crisis as well as by the "mission" which is universally attributed to the "armies", play the "Yugoslav" card.

Once again the dominant policy of our States is a deep, complete refusal to defend human rights everywhere and for everyone, a refusal of democracy as the basis for an international, planetary and regional law and order, of a "society based on laws" and of the vision of the federalist "subsidiarity" versus the idols of the national sovereignties.

11) In terms of political and social superstructures, of parties, of political subjects, of accidental and incidental battles, of situations, we must give an answer immediately. The Radical Party, with its three thousand Italian members and one thousand members of different nationalities, cannot and should not, at the risk of destroying the only organized alternative strategic, ideal and political attempt against these tendencies and these policies.

12) Had there not been, in Italy, an almost complete refusal on the part of the organized "Left" as a whole, of taking into consideration, or at least discussing, if not supporting, this attempt of ours, with an intellectual arrogance which is in all respects the expression of the "old world" as a whole, of the "Right", last year we could have already mobilized direct nonviolent (and institutional) actions in the Middle East for the non-passage on the occasion of the armed military response to destroy the great butcher of the Iraqis, with "nonviolent brigades", shaped on, but perhaps more adequate than, the "republican brigades" during the Spanish civil war, which was lost thanks to the attitude of the "Paris the communist" of Leon Blum and Herriot, of the Popular Front with its "lendemains qui chantent".

13) Our analysis is simple. In the coming days, excited and motivated by the "European" and Italian policy, the "Serbs", that is, the oppressors and the torturers of the Serbs themselves, will probably launch "final assaults", and are already devastating not only Slavonic, but also Istria, Dalmatia and every region of Croatia, perhaps already of Bosnia-Herzegovina. If this is a probability, the only choice we are tragically left is that of making the traditional, orthodox, nonviolent and Gandhian choice: that of defending truth and justice beside those who react with violence to the violence of the war that is waged against them. As during the Resistance, of any kind and in any place.

14) One of the explicit aims (in terms of actions) of the "Serbian" strategy is that of wearing down every democratic resource and resistance in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, driving the population to despair, anger, and rebellion against the "moderation", the "submissiveness" and "tolerance" which, despite contradictions (and we would have liked to see Italy, France and Great Britain in the same conditions!), rule Zagreb, Pristina and the Serbian oppositions themselves. We believe it a priority to show the populations martirized by this "Europe", bu this "free world", by Belgrade, that not only the Ustashas, the men of war (possibly a "just" war), the "Rights", the nationalisms of every colour, face war and death. Compassion and sympathy are experienced perhaps reasonably and humbly, but they are there. This is why, certain that the Radical Party's project, thanks to the quasi-heroic commitment of the First Secretary, Sergio Stanzani, of the President, Emma Bonino, of the Treasurer, Paolo Vigevano

, of Maurizio Turco and a handful of companions directly involved in the project, will not be further jeopardized; certain that hundreds of Radical companions and other democrats will guarantee this arduous stage of the conclusion of the referendum campaign, which is still very risky; hoping in the mobilization of every radical for the quantitative and qualitative success of the "Italian congress" of 9-12 January 1992, for all this, therefore, we will move to Croatia to participate, in an unarmed front line service, assimilated humbly and with the maximum of independence and responsibility in the Croatian forces, in this infamous war on the opposite front of De Michelis, Mitterrand, Daladier, Laval, Chamberlain and Lord Halifax as in the time of the antifascist, anticommunist, antitotalitarian and democratic resistances. On the opposite and so very different front of the "pacifists" of so much part of the century and of violence.

15) We do not intend in the least to facilitate the presence, in our new places of commitment, of the ravens which seem to want to circle above us on this occasion, and who are the same that every day undermine our difficult work of democracy, tolerance, respect of the laws and of legality, nonviolence and Reform (which is a constant self-reform) of politics with disinformation and subordination to the authority and to its corrupt and lethal subculture.

In any case, at this point they can do nothing but produce false images, and wounds to the identities and to the true stories of the soul and of the ideas and people that are not part of the regime and of the establishment. The events that could take place in Yugoslavia, to start with, were made possible thanks to the everyday, fierce ostracism on all important issues which is reserved to us in our country, the conditions of which we are ashamed of.

16) What we are doing, what we are preparing to do, as always cannot be understood if the reasons, the motivations, the means, the ideals and the ideas which are the basis of them are unknown and censured, clandestine.

In Italy today, "Radio London" is nothing but "Radio Radicale", to the extent in which it can and will succeed in being such better and better in such circumstances. The Party of Justice and Freedom, of the liberal revolution, of the peacebearing peace, of political tolerance, is the Radical Party; we know no other as such, nor of any other attempt (among the many respectable and noble attempts) which go in the same direction.

Our hope is that 1992 will be the year of the formation of a great, immense Radical Party. It is the wish which we address to everyone, from President Cossiga to Occhetto, from President Andreotti to Craxi, from Presidents Iotti and Spadolini to Cossutta and La Malfa, from Trentin to Agnelli, from Del Turco to Altissimo, from Orlando to Fini to Bossi and Gelli. But only to those who, like us, are preparing to create the Radical Party of 1992, we wish to express our thanking, our gratitude and even - why feel ashamed of it? - our love.