1975 non-binding European and North American political agreement
The
Helsinki Final Act
, also known as
Helsinki Accords
or
Helsinki Declaration
was the document signed at the closing meeting of the third phase of the
Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe
(CSCE) held in
Helsinki
,
Finland
, between 30 July and 1 August 1975, following two years of negotiations known as the Helsinki Process.
[1]
All then-existing
European countries
except
Andorra
and
Hoxhaist
Albania
, as well as the
United States
and
Canada
(altogether 35 participating states), signed the Final Act in an attempt to improve the
detente
between the
East
and the
West
. The Helsinki Accords, however, were not binding as they did not have
treaty
status that would have to be ratified by parliaments.
[2]
Sometimes the term "Helsinki pact(s)" was also used unofficially.
[3]
Articles
[
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]
In the CSCE terminology, there were four groupings or baskets. In the first basket, the "Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States" (also known as "The Decalogue") enumerated the following 10 points:
The second basket promised economic, scientific, and technological cooperation; facilitating business contacts and industrial cooperation; linking together transportation networks; and increasing the flow of information. The third basket involved commitments to improve the human context of family reunions, marriages and travel. It also sought to improve the conditions of journalists and expand cultural exchanges. The fourth basket dealt with procedures to monitor implementation, and to plan future meetings.
[4]
Freedom of information
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The United States had sought a provision that would prohibit
radio jamming
but it failed to find consensus due to Soviet opposition. Despite this, the West believed jamming was illegal under the agreed upon language for "expansion of the dissemination of information broadcast by radio". The Soviet Union believed that jamming was a legally justified response to broadcasts they argued were a violation of the Helsinki Accords' broad purpose to "meet the interest of mutual understanding among people and the aims set forth by the Conference".
[5]
Ford administration
[
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]
When President
Gerald Ford
came into office in August 1974, the
Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe
(CSCE) negotiations had been underway for nearly two years. Although the USSR was looking for a rapid resolution, none of the parties were quick to make concessions, particularly on human rights points. Throughout much of the negotiations, US leaders were disengaged and uninterested with the process. In August 1974, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger
said to Ford "we never wanted it but we went along with the Europeans [...] It is meaningless ? it is just a grandstand play to the left. We are going along with it."
[6]
In the months leading up to the conclusion of negotiations and signing of the Helsinki Final Act, the American public, in particular Americans of Eastern European descent voiced their concerns that the agreement would mean the acceptance of
Soviet domination over Eastern Europe
and
forced incorporation of the Baltic States into the USSR
. President Ford was concerned about this as well and sought clarification on this issue from the
US National Security Council
.
[7]
The US Senate was also worried about the fate of the
Baltic States
and the CSCE in general. Several senators wrote to President Ford requesting that the final summit stage be delayed until all matters had been settled, and in a way favorable to the West.
[8]
Ford also attracted criticism from a wide range of political spectrum when he refused to meet with
Soviet dissident
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
to avoid damaging
Soviet Union?United States relations
before the conference.
[9]
Shortly before President Ford departed for Helsinki, he held a meeting with a group of Americans of Eastern European background, and stated definitively that US policy on the Baltic States would not change, but would be strengthened since the agreement denies the annexation of territory in violation of
international law
and allows for the peaceful change of borders.
[10]
Ford in July 1975 told the delegation of Americans from East European backgrounds that:
The Helsinki documents involve political and moral commitments aimed at lessening tensions and opening further the lines of communication between peoples of East and West. ... We are not committing ourselves to anything beyond what we are already committed to by our own moral and legal standards and by more formal treaty agreements such as the
United Nations Charter
and
Declaration of Human Rights
. ... If it all fails, Europe will be no worse off than it is now. If even a part of it succeeds, the lot the people in Eastern Europe will be that much better, and the cause of freedom will advance at least that far.
[11]
His reassurances had little effect. The volume of negative mail continued to grow.
[10]
The American public was still unconvinced that American policy on the incorporation of the Baltic States would not be changed by the Helsinki Final Act. Despite protests from all around, Ford decided to move forward and sign the agreement.
[12]
As domestic criticism mounted, Ford hedged on his support for the Helsinki Accords, which had the impact of overall weakening his foreign-policy stature.
[13]
Ronald Reagan
made the Accords a centerpiece of
his campaign
against Ford for the
1976 Republican Party presidential primaries
. During the
general election
, the Democratic nominee
Jimmy Carter
attacked the Accords as a legitimation of the "Soviet domination of Eastern Europe." A debate about the Accords in this vein during the
1976 United States presidential debates
led to an infamous presidential gaffe in which Ford claimed that there was "no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration."
[9]
His blunder in the debate with Carter when he denied Kremlin control of Poland proved disastrous.
[13]
Reception and impact
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The document was seen both as a significant step toward reducing
Cold War
tensions and as a major diplomatic boost for the Soviet Union at the time, due to its clauses on the inviolability of national frontiers and respect for territorial integrity, which were seen to consolidate the USSR's territorial gains in Eastern Europe following
World War II
. Considering objections from
Canada
,
Spain
,
Ireland
and other states, the Final Act simply stated that "frontiers" in Europe should be stable but could change by peaceful internal means.
[14]
: 65
US president
Gerald Ford
also reaffirmed that US
non-recognition policy
of the
Baltic States
' (
Lithuania
,
Latvia
and
Estonia
)
forced incorporation into the Soviet Union
had not changed.
[15]
Leaders of other
NATO
member states made similar statements.
[14]
: 65
However, the
civil rights
portion of the agreement provided the basis for the work of the
Helsinki Watch
, an independent
non-governmental organization
created to monitor compliance to the Helsinki Accords (which evolved into several regional committees, eventually forming the
International Helsinki Federation
and
Human Rights Watch
). While these provisions applied to all signatories, the focus of attention was on their application to the Soviet Union and its
Warsaw Pact
allies, including
Bulgaria
,
Czechoslovakia
, the
German Democratic Republic
(East Germany),
Hungary
,
Poland
, and
Romania
.
Soviet propaganda
presented the Final Act as a great triumph for Soviet diplomacy and for Brezhnev personally.
[14]
: 65
In practice, the Soviet government significantly curbed the
rule of law
,
civil liberties
,
protection of law
and
guarantees of property
,
[16]
[17]
which were considered examples of "bourgeois morality" by Soviet legal theorists such as
Andrey Vyshinsky
.
[18]
The Soviet Union signed legally-binding human rights documents, but they were neither widely known or accessible to people living under Communist rule, nor were they taken seriously by the Communist authorities.
[19]
: 117
Human rights activists in the Soviet Union were regularly subjected to harassment, repressions and arrests.
According to the Cold War scholar
John Lewis Gaddis
in his book
The Cold War: A New History
(2005), "
Leonid Brezhnev
had looked forward,
Anatoly Dobrynin
recalls, to the 'publicity he would gain... when the Soviet public learned of the final settlement of the postwar boundaries for which they had sacrificed so much'... '[Instead, the Helsinki Accords] gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement'... What this meant was that the people who lived under these [communist] systems — at least the more courageous — could claim official permission to say what they thought."
[20]
The then-
People's Republic of Albania
refused to participate in the Accords, its leader
Enver Hoxha
arguing, "All the satellites of the Soviets with the
possible exception of the Bulgarians
want to break the shackles of the
Warsaw Treaty
, but they cannot. Then their only hope is that which the Helsinki document allows them, that is, to strengthen their friendship with the United States of America and the West, to seek investments from them in the form of credits and imports of their technology without any restrictions, to allow the church to occupy its former place, to deepen the moral degeneration, to increase the
anti-Sovietism
, and the Warsaw Treaty will remain an empty egg-shell."
[21]
The Helsinki Accords served as the groundwork for the later
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE), established in 1995 under the
Paris Charter
of 1990.
Signatory states
[
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]
Heads of state or government
[
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]
The "undersigned High Representatives of the participating States" as well as seating at the conference were ordered alphabetically by the countries' short names in French (thus starting with the two
Allemagne
s followed by
America
, and
Tchecoslovaquie
separated from
Union sovietique
by
Turquie
etc.). This also influenced the act's headers consecutively in German, English, Spanish, French, Italian and Russian, which were also the conference's working languages and languages of the act itself.
[22]
- Helmut Schmidt
,
Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
- Erich Honecker
,
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany
- Gerald Ford
,
President of the United States
- Bruno Kreisky
,
Chancellor of Austria
- Leo Tindemans
,
Prime Minister of Belgium
- Todor Zhivkov
,
Chairman of the State Council of Bulgaria
- Pierre Trudeau
,
Prime Minister of Canada
- Makarios III
,
President of Cyprus
- Anker Jørgensen
,
Prime Minister of Denmark
- Carlos Arias Navarro
,
Prime Minister of Spain
- Urho Kekkonen
,
President of Finland
- Valery Giscard d’Estaing
,
President of France
(who also serves as
Co-Prince of Andorra
however no such function at all is mentioned in the declaration)
- Harold Wilson
,
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
- Konstantinos Karamanlis
,
Prime Minister of Greece
- Janos Kadar
, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the
Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party
- Liam Cosgrave
,
Taoiseach of Ireland
- Geir Hallgrimsson
,
Prime Minister of Iceland
- Aldo Moro
,
Prime Minister of Italy
- Walter Kieber
,
Prime Minister of Liechtenstein
- Gaston Thorn
,
Prime Minister of Luxembourg
- Dom Mintoff
,
Prime Minister of Malta
- Andre Saint-Mleux
,
Minister of State of Monaco
- Trygve Bratteli
,
Prime Minister of Norway
- Joop den Uyl
,
Prime Minister of the Netherlands
- Edward Gierek
, First Secretary of the
Polish United Workers' Party
- Francisco da Costa Gomes
,
President of Portugal
- Nicolae Ceau?escu
,
President of Romania
- Gian Luigi Berti
,
Captain Regent of San Marino
- Agostino Casaroli
,
Cardinal Secretary of State
- Olof Palme
,
Prime Minister of Sweden
- Pierre Graber
,
President of the Swiss Confederation
- Gustav Husak
,
President of Czechoslovakia
- Suleyman Demirel
,
Prime Minister of Turkey
- Leonid Brezhnev
,
General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
- Josip Broz Tito
,
President of Yugoslavia
International organizations
[
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]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
https://www.csce.gov/sites/helsinkicommission.house.gov/files/The%20Helsinki%20Process%20Four%20Decade%20Overview.pdf
[
bare URL PDF
]
- ^
Encyclopædia Britannica
.
Helsinki Accords
. Available at:
https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260615/Helsinki-Accords
- ^
"Helsinki pact: A three-way battle in Madrid"
.
Christian Science Monitor
. 9 September 1980.
- ^
Timothy J. Lynch, ed.,
The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Military and Diplomatic History
(2013) 1: 460-62.
- ^
Price, Rochelle B. (1984).
"Jamming and the Law of International Communications"
.
Michigan Journal of International Law
.
5
(1).
- ^
Ford, Gerald
;
Kissinger, Henry
;
Scowcroft, Brent
(August 15, 1974).
President Ford?Henry Kissinger memcon (August 15, 1974)
. Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library. p.
5
– via
Wikisource
.
[
scan
]
- ^
President's Inquiry on CSCE / Baltic States (Case File)
- ^
Request by Senators for a Delay of the Final Stage of Helsinki Final Act (Case File)
- ^
a
b
Wilentz, Sean (2008).
The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008
(1 ed.). New York, NY: Harper.
ISBN
978-0-06-074480-9
.
OCLC
182779124
.
- ^
a
b
Memorandum for Henry Kissinger from A. Denis Clift, Re: Replies to Correspondence Critical of CSCE
- ^
Ford, Gerald R. (1977).
Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald R. Ford, 1975
. Best Books on. pp. 1030?31.
ISBN
9781623768485
.
- ^
President Ford's Visit to Helsinki, July 29 - August 2, 1975, CSCE Briefing Book
- ^
a
b
Sarah B. Snyder, "Through the Looking Glass: The Helsinki Final Act and the 1976 Election for President."
Diplomacy & Statecraft
21.1 (2010): 87-106.
- ^
a
b
c
Hiden, John; Vahur Made; David J. Smith (2008).
The Baltic question during the Cold War
. Routledge. p. 209.
ISBN
978-0-415-37100-1
.
- ^
McHugh, James T.; James S. Pacy (2001).
Diplomats without a country: Baltic diplomacy, international law, and the Cold War
. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 84.
ISBN
978-0-313-31878-8
.
- ^
Richard Pipes
(2001)
Communism
Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
ISBN
0-297-64688-5
- ^
Richard Pipes
(1994)
Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime
. Vintage.
ISBN
0-679-76184-5
., pages 401–403.
- ^
Wyszy?ski, Andrzej (1949).
Teoria dowodow s?dowych w prawie radzieckim
(PDF)
. Biblioteka Zrzeszenia Prawnikow Demokratow. pp. 153, 162.
- ^
Thomas, Daniel C. (2005).
"Human Rights Ideas, the Demise of Communism, and the End of the Cold War"
.
Journal of Cold War Studies
.
7
(2): 110?141.
doi
:
10.1162/1520397053630600
.
S2CID
57570614
.
- ^
Gaddis, John Lewis (2005).
The Cold War
. London: Penguin. p. 190.
ISBN
978-0-141-02532-2
.
- ^
Enver Hoxha.
The Superpowers
. Tirane: 8 Nentori Publishing House. 1986.
- ^
https://www.csce.gov/sites/helsinkicommission.house.gov/files/Helsinki%20Final%20Act.pdf
[
bare URL PDF
]
Further reading
[
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]
- Korey, William.
The Promises We Keep: Human Rights, the Helsinki Process, and American Foreign Policy
(St. Martin's Press, 1993).
- Morgan, Michael Cotey.
The Final Act: The Helsinki Accords and the Transformation of the Cold War.
(Princeton UP, 2018).
- Nuti, Leopoldo, ed.
The Crisis of Detente in Europe: From Helsinki to Gorbachev 1975-1985
(Routledge, 2008).
- Snyder, Sarah B. "Through the Looking Glass: The Helsinki Final Act and the 1976 Election for President."
Diplomacy & Statecraft
21.1 (2010): 87-106. it helped defeat Gerald Ford
- Thomas, Daniel C. "The Helsinki accords and political change in Eastern Europe."
Cambridge Studies in International Relations
66 (1999): 205?233.|
- Thomas, Daniel C.
The Helsinki Effect: International Norms, Human Rights, and the Demise of Communism
. Princeton UP, 2001.
ISBN
9780691048598
- Wenger, Andreas,
Vojtech Mastny
, and Christian Nunlist, eds.
Origins of the European security system: the Helsinki Process revisited, 1965-75.
(Routledge, 2008).
- Kieninger, Stephan,
Dynamic Detente: The United States and Europe, 1964?1975
(Lexington Books, 2016).
- Badalassi, Nicolas, and Sarah B. Snyder, eds.
The CSCE and the End of the Cold War: Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 1972-1990
(Berghahn Books, 2018).
External links
[
edit
]
Wikisource
has original text related to this article: