Rethinking the "Helsinki Effect": International Networks and the End of the Cold War

Abstract

There is a burgeoning scholarly literature on the Helsinki process, but Sarah Snyder’s ambitious new book is an original contribution on two levels. First, she makes the case for the role of transnational human rights networks. Her central contention is that the “international Helsinki network,” an informal alliance of Eastern bloc dissidents, Western nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and U.S. governmental structures, played a crucial role in provoking Gorbachev’s reforms and the dissolution of Soviet-style communism. By restoring human agency to the Helsinki process, this argument represents a significance advance on Daniel C. Thomas’ study of the “Helsinki Effect,” which celebrates the triumph of norms, not people. Thomas reduces the human rights campaigns of East European dissidents to a by-product of the principles enshrined in the Final Act.1 In contrast, Snyder seeks to demonstrate that the Helsinki process became an emancipatory force less because of the terms of its founding document than because of the efforts of real people, the activists who worked tirelessly to publicize the sufferings of prisoners of conscience and the diplomats who took up their cases (p. 245).