Statement by
The Rt Hon Margaret Thatcher, MP Prime Minister
of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Paris, 19 November 1990
I was a sceptic about the Helsinki Agreements when the Final Document was signed 15 years ago. What worried me was not the commitments-everyone could see that they were desirable--but I doubted whether the signatories would really abide by those commitments in practice. After all, there was nothing in the record of the Soviet and East European Governments at that time which gave us any confidence that freer movement of people and ideas would actually be allowed, or the other provisions of the Agreement observed.
At the time, that scepticism was justified. There were very few significant results in the early years except for an increase in emigration of Soviet Jews, which was very welcome. Indeed, there were real fears that we in the West had accepted the division of Europe for all time, in return for a few scraps of paper which would never be honoured. People remained in prison or psychiatric hospitals simply for the "crime" of claiming their basic human rights. There was no significant increase in travel. What was called the "Brezhnev Doctrine" continued to apply. The level of armed forces in Europe did not decline. Soviet forces went into Afghanistan which was hardly consistent with the spirit of the principles which had been agreed in Helsinki.
That is history. With hindsight, it is clear that we under-estimated the long- term effects of the Helsinki Agreements, effects which were felt in a number of ways.
The effects of the Agreements
The first was the effect on individuals in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. In the darkest days of their struggle for basic human rights, the agreements were a tremendous encouragement and inspiration which helped them not to lose heart. They knew that theirs was no longer a private or lonely battle. They had the backing of a solemn and binding international agreement. They had a Charter to which they could appeal, to show that not only was their cause a just one, but that the Governments and authorities who were denying them their rights were in breach of specific obligations. The human rights monitoring groups set up under. the banner of the Helsinki Final Act in the Soviet Union and in East European countries in those years-headed by such names as Sakharov, Orlov, President Havel were a specific and very positive result of Helsinki.
But the agreements were not just an inspiration for those living under dictatorship. They gave governments and peoples in the West a locus to inquire into what would otherwise be regarded as strictly internal matters and insist on observance of basic human rights in the then Communist countries. Every bilateral meeting we held in those days with Communist governments became an occasion to raise specific cases and to challenge failure to live up to the obligations accepted in the Helsinki Agreements.
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