6 - Human Rights in East–West Diplomacy

Summary

The inability to reach a substantive concluding document at the Belgrade Meeting and increased Soviet and Eastern European repression of human rights activists in the meeting's wake raised questions about the potential promise of the Helsinki process. What followed was a complicated but important period in which political support for the Helsinki process solidified in the United States, Western allies united around CSCE objectives, and nongovernmental organizations developed a cohesive approach to promoting their agenda, but little progress was made in securing human rights observance in Eastern Europe. The significance of this period lies in the strengthening of the Western commitment to human rights such that Eastern European violations became an important component of East–West diplomacy. As this chapter illustrates, transnational connections forged in advance of and during the Madrid CSCE Review Meeting (1980–3) were a fundamental reason human rights took on such international importance. Western pressure throughout these years did not result in meaningful success but did convince Soviet leaders that progress on other questions such as trade and arms control was connected with their record on human rights. Although the sides remained at a virtual stalemate until 1985, the increasing attention to human rights in the preceding years was an integral part of the human rights reforms that arose once Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.