The West German foreign minister, Willy Brandt, argued that detente in Europe should continue despite the 1968 invasion. An increase of communication between the blocs could lead to gradual change in the East. But he acknowledged that if the West had legitimate strategic interests on the continent, so too did the other side. West German openings to the East began in Moscow.
A Bonn-Moscow treaty (August 1970) declared the inviolability of existing European borders, including those between East and West Germany. According to Western critics of detente, this was a brilliant diplomatic success for the Soviet Union, legitimising its East European empire. But defenders of detente saw the results as more positive. Recognition of the postwar status quo in Europe could be the precondition for overcoming it. The first beneficiary was Poland.
A Bonn-Warsaw treaty (December 1970) recognised Poland’s Western frontier and declared existing borders inviolable 'for now and for the future’. The countries had 'no territorial claims on each other and will not raise such claims in the future’. The treaty granted Poland access to the largest and most dynamic economy in Europe. West Germany agreed to promote and help finance Poland’s economic growth.
Moscow was also interested in greater East-West collaboration. Brezhnev declared a new openness in economic relations with the capitalist West. In June 1973, he told business leaders in Washington that the Soviet Union sought a new era of international relations based on stability. An initial package of agreements with the United States included a grain deal to compensate for disappointing Soviet harvests and other failures of collective agriculture.
Detente offered rich pickings to the West. Even if it were a trick by the Communists, as hawks insisted, Brezhnev’s offer provided opportunities. Some in the West believed that mutual self-interest through bilateral trade, credits, and even shared technology would eventually lead to a convergence of the two systems. It also gave Western governments new leverage in the East. They began to condition their willingness to share technology and extend credits on improved treatment of East European citizens. Officials in Washington, for example, argued that most-favoured-nation status should be extended to those Communist governments which had gone furthest to liberalise their rule.
Perhaps the most lasting legacy of detente was the least expected: the long-anticipated Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe. Once the Soviet Union dropped its objections to the United States and Canada attending, its implicit agenda of excluding and eventually dissolving NATO disappeared. At Helsinki (August 1975), thirty-five governments adopted a new set of principles on security in Europe. Echoing the United Nations Charter, they declared that states would not intervene in sovereign 'affairs falling within the domestic jurisdiction’ of another signatory. A special section of the agreement, popularly known as Basket III, guaranteed 'respect for humans rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief. A further paragraph committed all participating states to 'promote and encourage the effective exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and other rights and freedoms all of which derive from the inherent dignity of the human person and are essential for his free and full development’.326
The Helsinki Accords provided the incipient opposition in Eastern Europe with a new defence for human rights. They enabled dissidents to challenge their governments: 'We are merely asking you to keep your international agreements,’ they could now say. Although persecuted by the authorities, Helsinki monitoring groups were founded in Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, Erevan and Wilno. Similar groups were formed in Eastern Europe. The most notable was in Czechoslovakia.
In Prague, the proponents of 'Charter 77’ gave a comprehensive account of violations of both the Helsinki Accords and the UN Charter. They stated that freedom of expression in Czechoslovakia was violated by the centralised control of media and cultural institutions. Tens of thousands of citizens had been excluded from their professions during the 'normalisation’ that followed the 1968 invasion. Similarly, numerous young people had been denied entry to universities because their parents’ opinions did not accord with official views. A novel feature of 'Charter 77’ was its informality. To avoid official charges of illegality, it remained a 'virtual’ organisation, without rules for membership, subscriptions or administration. It was open to all those 'united by the will to strive, individually and collectively, for the respect ofcivic and human rights in our own country and throughout the world’. In deliberate contrast to the Communist Party, the Chartists sought 'informal, non-bureaucratic, dynamic and open communities’.327
'Charter 77’ championed inclusion. Seeking to build consensus rather than emphasise difference, contacts were made with Western Europeans, in particular peace activists interested in fostering detente. Czech dissidents also sought linkages with like-minded people elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Emboldened by Helsinki’s statements on the free movement of peoples and ideas, oppositionists started to communicate across frontiers. Border meetings took place between East Europeans. Despite much police harassment and frequent arrests, Poles and Czechs managed to edit a joint publication.
Their volume included Vaclav Havel’s seminal essay, The Power of the Powerless (1978). Circulated widely at home, it soon came out in Hungary and Poland, and was translated in the West. Havel distinguished between two types of powerlessness. The first type, to which Havel himself belonged, was best described as 'a category of sub-citizen outside the power system’. These outsiders were known in the West as 'dissidents’. But his second category was much larger: conformists at every level who hid behind comforting phraseology and reiterated the soothing official ideology that claimed all citizens were living in the best possible world.
When a greengrocer placed the sign 'Workers of the World Unite!’ amongst the onions and carrots in his window, he ignored its semantic content. The slogan was simply delivered to his shop, along with the vegetables. Not to display it would invite the charge of disloyalty. So he engaged in passive acceptance. He comforted himself with the thought that there would be nothing wrong with workers of the world uniting. Yet one day he might reconsider and remove the sign from the window. He could go further and refuse to vote in single-party elections. He might begin to express his real views at public meetings. By thus refusing to live the public lie, he would recover his personal identity and dignity.
Another Chartist, Vaclav Benda, advocated the construction of an alternative public sphere. He noted that a parallel - or black market - economy had always existed alongside the state-regulated one. Likewise, alternative social institutions could be set up. Independent forms of higher education were already taking place in underground ('flying’) universities in Czechoslovakia and Poland. Actions by independent citizens could create a 'parallel polis’ alongside the Communist one. This was beginning to happen in Poland.
World History
