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Essay from the year 2013 in the subject World History - Modern History, grade: 1,7, University of Siegen (Neue Geschichte), course: Human Right as Political Argument after World War II, language: English, abstract: This essay will deal with the question of wether and how the concept of human rights has led to changes in Soviet policies and to the end of the „Cold War“. A special focus will be on the work of the CSCE (Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europea) and non-governmental groups (further revered to as NGOs). After World War II, national leaders had learned that international regimes were not just a domestic matter but could themselves become a menace to world peace. Although, while many human rights are, as Louise Shelley has pointed out, a Western concept and not encouraged or institutionalized by many non-Western countries, these countries were signatories to the United Nations ́ convention on human rights. Still their political and social cultures did not conform to many of the provisions expressed in it. This issue of human rights, as it has emerged mainly out of the ideas of the Enlightenment, still remained alien to many of the world ́s nations after the War. As has been pointed out by distinguished historians and as Shelley mentioned, Russia remained 'outside' the Enlightenment. The Soviet Union is the heir of the Russian legal tradition, a culture in which individual rights were consistently subordinated to the state. It is also important to note that Russia was, as Shelley said, never directly exposed to the ideas of the Enlightenment, although some of its values were transmitted via the czars. Most important to know is that Human rights cannot be imposed on a society. Institutions that foster and nurture human rights must develop in a society itself. This is a gradual process. In societies without such a tradition it is unnatural to expect that such a transformation can occur in the face of a different historical legacy and in the face of other pressing economic and political problems. Knowing this, the following paper will show how NGOs and Soviet national leaders have tried to establish Human Rights in the USSR and what role the CSCE played in that process.
From its inception, the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) provoked controversy. Today it is widely regarded as having contributed to the end of the Cold War. Bringing together new and innovative research on the CSCE, this volume explores questions key to understanding the Cold War: What role did diplomats play in shaping the 1975 Helsinki Final Act? How did that agreement and the CSCE more broadly shape societies in Europe and North America? And how did the CSCE and activists inspired by the Helsinki Final Act influence the end of the Cold War?
Two of the most pressing questions facing international historians today are how and why the Cold War ended. Human Rights Activism and the End of the Cold War explores how, in the aftermath of the signing of the Helsinki Final Act in 1975, a transnational network of activists committed to human rights in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe made the topic a central element in East-West diplomacy. As a result, human rights eventually became an important element of Cold War diplomacy and a central component of détente. Sarah B. Snyder demonstrates how this network influenced both Western and Eastern governments to pursue policies that fostered the rise of organized dissent in Eastern Europe, freedom of movement for East Germans and improved human rights practices in the Soviet Union - all factors in the end of the Cold War.
Human rights norms do matter. Those established by the Helsinki Final Act contributed directly to the demise of communism in the former East bloc, contends Daniel Thomas. This book counters those skeptics who doubt that such international norms substantially affect domestic political change, while explaining why, when, and how they matter most. Thomas argues that the Final Act, signed in 1975, transformed the agenda of East-West relations and provided a common platform around which opposition forces could mobilize. Without downplaying other factors, Thomas shows that the norms established at Helsinki undermined the viability of one-party Communist rule and thereby contributed significantly to the largely peaceful and democratic changes of 1989, as well as the end of the Cold War. Drawing on both governmental and nongovernmental sources, he offers a powerful Constructivist alternative to Realist theory's failure to anticipate or explain these crucial events. This study will fundamentally influence ongoing debates about the politics of international institutions, the socialization of states, the spread of democracy, and, not least, about the balance of factors that felled the Iron Curtain. It casts new light on Solidarity, Charter 77, and other democratic movements in Eastern Europe, the sources of Gorbachev's reforms, the evolution of the European Union, U.S. foreign policy, and East-West relations in the final decades of the Cold War. The Helsinki Effect will be essential reading for scholars and students of international relations, international law, European politics, human rights, and social movements.