Helsinki myths: setting the record straight on the Final Act of the CSCE, 1975

Abstract

This article takes issue with American historians of the Cold War who assert that the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 endorsed the post-war division of Europe, and that its results were accidental or surprising. The article demonstrates that the nine members of the (then) European Community, with important support from neutrals and non-aligned, resisted strong pressure from Moscow and Washington to confirm the status quo. Instead, they ensured that the Final Act became an agenda for change.

Acknowledgements

For valuable help and suggestions I would like to thank Tony Bishop, Archie Brown, Anne Deighton, Petri Hakkarainen, Keith Hamilton, Kai Hebel, and Mark Kramer.

Notes

 [1] Documents on British Policy Overseas (DBPO) III/II, 474–9. Sir Terence Garvey, the ambassador in question, was among the most sceptical observers of the CSCE but even he granted, in a summing up on 9 September 1975, that the Final Act was ‘greatly different’ from early Soviet proposals, that there were gains in it for the West, and that the Soviet Union was showing concern about ‘likely difficulties’ that could follow from it.

 [2] See Thomas, The Helsinki Effect for an excellent examination of these after-effects.

 [3] At the Four Power conference in Berlin from 25 January to 18 February 1954, Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, proposed a 50-year security pact in Europe excluding the United States.

 [4] A Warsaw Pact summit meeting in Budapest on 17 March 1969 avoided previously routine attacks on West German and US policies. Warsaw Pact foreign ministers, meeting in Budapest on 21–22 June 1970, formally accepted US participation.

 [5] The Berlin agreement was signed on 3 September 1971; the Soviet Union agreed to talks on MBFR in May 1972.

 [6] I have used the term ‘East Germany’ because many modern readers are confused by ‘German Democratic Republic’. The treaty between West and East Germany was signed on 26 May 1972. It accepted East Germany as a separate state but not its people as a separate nationality. Exchange of missions fell short of full diplomatic recognition. The German question was kept open by means of an attached ‘Letter on German unity’. Four Power rights were also safeguarded pending a peace treaty.

 [7] ‘Peaceful coexistence’ was a Soviet doctrine postulating peaceful competition and ‘ideological struggle’ with capitalism as an alternative to war. Strenuous Soviet efforts to get it into the Final Act were blocked because Western negotiators were determined that the Final Act should apply to relations among all signatories, not just to East–West relations.

 [8] Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation, 290; FRUS, 303.

 [9] Gates, From the Shadows, 88.

[10] Russell, ‘The Helsinki Declaration’, 246.

[11] Bock: ‘We went to Helsinki in 1972 expecting to start on 22 November, finish the preparatory talks by Christmas, […] complete the Final Act in 1973 and close the conference in the middle of that year’.

[12] DBPO III/II, 144.

[13] Also but seldom called the European Communities (European Economic Community, European Coal and Steel Community and European Atomic Energy Community).

[14] Möckli, ‘The EC Nine’, passim.

[15] ICBH Witness Seminar, 27.

[16] Final Act: see References.

[17] Davy, ed., European Detente, 19.

[18] Foreign Affairs, Spring 1980, 779 and 783 (bound edition).

[19] Pipes, Soviet Strategy in Europe, 42.

[20] Bialer, ‘The Political System’, 7.

[21] Time, November 1982.

[22] Wall Street Journal, 23 August 1975, 16.

[23] Quoted in Garthoff, Detente and Confrontation, 478.

[24] Newsweek (international edition), 11 August 1975.

[25] Ford, A Time to Heal, 297.

[26] Ford, A Time to Heal, 292–3.

[27] Judt, Postwar, 501.

[28] Judt, Postwar, 502.

[29] Maresca, To Helsinki, 130–3, 155.

[30] Rostagni, The Helsinki Process, 192. This internal East German assessment of the Final Act misrepresents the text on several issues in order to claim more success than the negotiators actually achieved.

[31] Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind, 249.

[32] Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind, 235.

[33] Zubok, A Failed Empire, 237.

[34] Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles, 60.

[35] Gaddis, The Cold War, 187.

[36] Gaddis, The Cold War, 190.

[37] Gaddis, The Cold War, 191.

[38] Dahrendorf, Reflections, 113–4.

[39] Brzezinski, ‘Human Rights in Foreign Policy’, 24.

[40] Online edition www.bartleby.com/65/.

[41] Maresca, To Helsinki, 3.

[42] Maresca, To Helsinki, 211.

[43] For a detailed explanation of this complex issue see Russell, 257–9 or Maresca, 80–7.

[44] Maresca, 3.

[45] DBPO III/II, 41.

[46] DBPO III.II, 137.

[47] Möckli, ‘The EC Nine’, 157.

[48] ICBH Witness Seminar.

[49] Maresca, To Helsinki, 110–6; FRUS, many references, especially 804–10.

[50] DBPO III/II, 106, note 2. The German/Soviet treaty in the Russian version declares all the frontiers of Europe, including that between the two Germanys, permanently ‘indissoluble’ but then attaches a West German letter reserving the right of the Germans to reunification. The same contradiction is contained in the Russian version of the Final Act, further accentuated by adding the right of peaceful change. The English and German versions avoid this problem by describing the frontiers as ‘inviolable’ and ‘unverletzlich’ rather than permanent.

[51] Email from a British participant who did not wish to go on record because he had no files to hand.

[52] Alexander, Managing the Cold War: ‘There was a tendency for the Soviets to produce a thoroughly self-serving translation of a text agreed in English or French; to feign astonishment and anger when this was queried; and then to resist all but minor changes’. For more on this subject see also K.A. Bishop's graphic contribution to the ICBH Witness Seminar, 59. The same problem was experienced when drafting the Charter of the United Nations in 1945.

[53] Russell, ‘The Helsinki Declaration’, 251.

[54] Russell, ‘The Helsinki Declaration’, 249, 252.

[55] Many sources. Russell, 253–5, quotes at length from New York Times translation, 27 September 1968, 14.

[56] For instance, DPBO , 73, 184–5.

[57] Unpublished paper by F. Borrows, Legal Counsellor to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, October 1975, 12.

[58] Maresca, To Helsinki, 113.

[59] Rotfeld, email to the author, 6 April 2007.

[60] Russell, ‘The Helsinki Declaration’, 253–7.

[61] British National Archives, FCO 41/1766. See also Russell, 260.

[62] Less controversial than the others, Basket II nevertheless dealt with difficult issues, such as access to commercial information, easier travel for businessmen, and reciprocity between planned and market economies.

[63] Perhaps, therefore, it can be loosely described as a human rights Basket but it is too often confused with the very specific pledges on human rights in Principle VII of Basket I.

[64] DPBO , III/II, 320.

[65] DPBO , III/II, 252.

[66] Gates, From the Shadows, 86; Judt, Postwar, 502.

[67] Related in Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 80. Copenhagen Declaration 14 December 1973.

[68] NATO declaration, Brussels, 4–5 December 1969.

[69] Möckli, ‘The EC Nine’, 149 and passim.

[70] See Hakkarainen, ‘From Linkage to Freer Movement’ for an excellent account of West Germany's approach to the CSCE. Also his D.Phil thesis (Oxford) going more deeply into the same subject.

[71] Ash, In Europe's Name.

[72] Möckli, ‘The EC Nine’, 148.

[73] DPBO III/II, 41.

[74] Baudet, ‘It was Cold War and we wanted to win’, 186.

[75] DPBO III/II, 181.

[76] DPBO III/II, 51.

[77] DPBO III/II, 185.

[78] Ceska, verbal contribution.

[79] Thomas, The Helsinki Effect, 78.

[80] DPBO III/II, 50.

[81] DPBO III/II, 323.

[82] DPBO III/II, 325n.

[83] Maresca, To Helsinki, 78. For a full account of this meeting see FRUS, 82245. On the ‘global solution’ see Alexander, Managing the Cold War, chapter 3.

[84] Gaddis, The Cold War, 188.

[85] Davy, ‘The CSCE Summit’, 352–3. Also an editorial in The Times (London) 28 July 1975.

[86] Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind, 234.

[87] This did not prevent the media of the Warsaw Pact systematically misrepresenting the text to claim the contrary. For instance: ‘The ten political Principles are thus the quintessence of the peaceful coexistence of states with different social systems’. Tass report of Izvestia article, 2 August 1975. BBC written archives SWB/4973/A1/1.

[88] Zubok, A Failed Empire, 237.

[89] Dobrynin, In Confidence, 346.

[90] Rotfeld, email to the author, 19 November 2007, and Alexander, British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, interview 34.

[91] Savranskaya, ‘Unintended consequences’. See also Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism. Kovalev was conspicuously not decorated for his role as leader of the Soviet delegation.

[92] Quoted in Savranskaya, ‘Unintended consequences’. See also Brown, The Rise and Fall of Communism

[93] Rotfeld, email to the author, 6 April 2007.

[94] Author's telephone conversation with Peter Steglich of the East German delegation, 8 May 2008.

[95] Steglich and Leuschner, KSZE, Fossil oder Hoffnung?, 42–50.

[96] Bock, interview with the author, Berlin, 11 June 2008. See also Rostagni, The Helsinki Process, 54.

[97] Michal Alexander tells the story in Managing the Cold War without naming Nowak, who has since confirmed the episode in a telephone conversation with the author (21 November 2007) with slight corrections that I have included. Alexander names Nowak in British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, interview 34.

[98] The Bulletin-Archive Supplement 4 no. 8, Press and Information Office of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany (1975).

[99] DPBO III/II, 455.