Turning the pages back... August 1, 1975 (07/30/00)

Turning the pages back...

August 1, 1975

Twenty-five years ago on August 1, 1975, 33 European states, as well as the United States and Canada, signed the Final Act of the Helsinki Conference. The product of two years of meetings of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, the international agreement dealt with issues relating to security in Europe, in the process recognizing existing borders; outlined cooperation in economics, science, technology and the environment; and delineated humanitarian issues and human rights in a so-called "third basket" of wide-ranging and potentially far-reaching provisions.

The Ukrainian Weekly commented on the effect of the Helsinki Accords in an editorial in its August 23, 1975, issue:

"It took Brezhnev less than two weeks to state bluntly that the question of human rights, contained in the so-called third basket of the Helsinki declaration, which he and 34 other leaders signed with such pomp and ceremony on August 1, is indeed in the basket, at least as far as he is concerned

"Queried on this topic by U.S. congressmen who comprised an 18-member delegation touring the USSR, Comrade Brezhnev said that provisions contained in the "third basket," including freedom of movement, freer flow of ideas and peoples, will require further negotiations. Predictably, the other baskets, dealing with non-interference in internal affairs and, more importantly, inviolability of the present borders of the Kremlin-ruled empire, are, in Brezhnev's interpretation, no longer subject to discussion.

"The Communist Party boss merely confirmed what scores of Western political analysts feared for some time: that the West gained little from the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, but may have lost quite a bit. ..."

Thus, as seen from the above, there was much skepticism over the Helsinki Accords when they were first signed by 35 states - particularly regarding recognition of the Soviet Union's territorial conquests in Central and Eastern Europe.

However, in the months and years that followed, it was the Helsinki Accords that impelled human and national rights activists in the Soviet Union to form groups aimed at monitoring fulfillment of the provisions contained in this historic agreement - among them the Moscow Helsinki Monitoring Group and the Ukrainian Public Group to Promote Implementation of the Helsinki Accords. And, in the end, the Helsinki Accords lived up to their billing.

Source: "Human Rights - In a Basket" (editorial), The Ukrainian Weekly, August 23, 1975; Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, August 1, 1975.

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