Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.’ It also enjoined all thirty-five states to ‘promote and encourage the effective exercise of civil, political, economic, social, cultural and other rights and freedoms’, and to ‘recognize and respect the freedom of the individual to profess and practice, alone or in community with others, religion or belief acting in accordance with the dictates of his own conscience’. From this wordy and, as it seemed, toothless checklist of rights and obligations was born the Helsinki Rights movement. Within a year of getting their long-awaited international conference agreement, Soviet leaders were faced with a growing and ultimately uncontrollable flowering of circles, clubs, networks, charters and individuals, all demanding ‘merely’ that their governments stick to the letter of that same agreement, that—as enjoined by the Final Act—they ‘fulfill their obligations as set forth in the international declarations and agreements in this field’.