Helsinki Accords

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For the set of principles on human experimentation, see Declaration of Helsinki.

Erich Honecker (DDR, left) and Helmut Schmidt (BRD) in Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki 1975.

The Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Final Act, Helsinki Accords or Helsinki Declaration, was the final act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe held in Helsinki, Finland during July and August of 1975. Thirty-five states signed the declaration (the USA, Canada, and all European states except Albania and Andorra), which was an attempt to improve the relations between the Communist bloc and the West.

[edit] Articles of confederation

The Act's "Declaration on Principles Guiding Relations between Participating States" (also known as "The Decalogue") enumerated the following 10 points:

I. Sovereign equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty
II. Refraining from the threat or use of force
III. Inviolability of frontiers
IV. Territorial integrity of States
V. Peaceful settlement of disputes
VI. Non-intervention in internal affairs
VII. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief
VIII. Equal rights and self-determination of peoples
IX. Co-operation among States
X. Fulfilment in good faith of obligations under international law

[edit] Reception and impact

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 borders and respect for territorial integrity, which were seen to consolidate the USSR's territorial gains in Eastern Europe following the Second World War. Considering objections from the Canada, Spain, Ireland and other states, the Final Act simply stated that borders in Europe should be stable, but those borders could be changed by peaceful means.^[1]^:65 U.S. 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. Leaders of other NATO member states made similar statements.^[1]^:65

However, the civil rights portion of the agreement provided the basis for the work of the Moscow Helsinki Group, 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, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. Soviet propaganda presented the Final Act as a great triumph for Soviet diplomacy and for Brezhnev personally.^[1]^:65

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 systems — at least the more courageous — could claim official permission to say what they thought."