HELSINKI ACCORDS

HELSINKI ACCORDS. As part of the emerging East-West détente, in November 1972 talks opened in Helsinki to prepare for a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Between 3 July 1973 and 1 August 1975, representatives of thirty-five states, including the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union, the Vatican, and all of the European states except Albania, discussed the future of Europe.

On 1 August 1975 leaders from the participating nations signed the Helsinki Final Act. It included three "baskets." Basket I contained a "Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States." It legitimated the present borders within Europe, outlawed the use of force, prohibited intervention in the internal affairs of any state, and required respect for human rights and the self-determination of peoples.

Basket II addressed "Cooperation in the Field of Economics, of Science and Technology, and of the Environment." It sought to encourage increased East-West trade, scientific collaboration, and industrial management, and recognized the interdependence of societies across Europe.

Basket III dealt with "Cooperation in Humanitarian and other Fields." It provided a basis for increased person-to-person contacts between Eastern and Western Europe, encouraged the freer movement of peoples and ideas, and promised to facilitate the reunification of families long separated by Cold War conflict.

Critics were quick to point out that these agreements lacked enforcement mechanisms. Moreover, they gave the communist governments in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe legitimate standing as equals with the democratic regimes in the West. The Helsinki Accords, however, also legitimized human rights in the most repressive parts of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Dissidents, like the founders of "Charter 77" in Czechoslovakia, used the language of the Helsinki Accords to justify their criticisms of communist governments. Many of the dissidents inspired by the Helsinki Accords led the anticommunist revolutions of 1989. In addition, many of the "new thinkers" in the Soviet Union who attained power after 1985—including Mikhail Gorbachev—explained that they hoped to build a more humane European civilization, as outlined in the Helsinki Accords. Seeking stability, Soviet leaders signed the Final Act in 1975; in so doing they unleashed domestic forces they could not control.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

English, Robert. Russia and the Idea of the West: Gorbachev, Intellectuals, and the End of the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.

Garthoff, Raymond L. Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1994.

Maresca, John J. To Helsinki: The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 1973–1975. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1985.