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Helsinki Watch Committees in the Soviet Republics: Implications For FINAL REPORT T O NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR SOVIET AND EAST EUROPEAN RESEARC H TITLE : HELSINKI WATCH COMMITTEES IN THE SOVIET REPUBLICS : IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SOVIET NATIONALITY QUESTIO N AUTHORS : Yaroslav Bilinsky Tönu Parming CONTRACTOR : University of Delawar e PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS : Yaroslav Bilinsky, Project Director an d Co-Principal Investigato r Tönu Parming, Co-Principal Investigato r COUNCIL CONTRACT NUMBER : 621- 9 The work leading to this report was supported in whole or in part fro m funds provided by the National Council for Soviet and East European Research . NOTICE OF INTENTION TO APPLY FOR COPYRIGH T This work has been requested for manuscrip t review for publication . It is not to be quote d without express written permission by the authors , who hereby reserve all the rights herein . Th e contractual exception to this is as follows : The [US] Government will have th e right to publish or release Fina l Reports, but only in same forma t in which such Final Reports ar e delivered to it by the Council . Th e Government will not have the righ t to authorize others to publish suc h Final Reports without the consent o f the authors, and the individua l researchers will have the right t o apply for and obtain copyright o n any work products which may b e derived from work funded by th e Council under this Contract . ii EXEC 1 Overall Executive Summary HELSINKI WATCH COMMITTEES IN THE SOVIET REPUBLICS : IMPLICATIONS FOR THE SOVIET NATIONALITY QUESTION by Yaroslav Bilinsky, University of Delawar e d Tönu Parming, University of Marylan August 1, 1975, after more than two years of intensive negotiations, 35 Head s of Governments--President Ford of the United States, Prime Minister Trudeau of Canada , Secretary-General Brezhnev of the USSR, and the Chief Executives of 32 othe r European States--signed the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperatio n in Europe (CSCE) . This Conference has a long pre-history . February 10, 1954 , in the course of the Berlin Conference in Germany, the Soviet Union submitted a " Draft General European Treaty " on collective security . Its purpose was to preven t the integration of West Germany into NATO and to remove the United States fro m Europe (the US was not to be a member, only an observer) . That proposal wa s rejected . But Soviet policymakers persisted in calling for an all-European securit y treaty, which would also serve as a surrogate peace treaty and legitimize th e Soviet territorial expansion during and after World War II . West European state s such as the German Federal Republic became interested in the conclusion of such a treaty, if it would include provisions on human rights, specifically those allowin g a repatriation of ethnic (Volga) Germans from the Soviet Union and if it did no t exclude the US . The USSR made concessions : by 1970 she agreed to the participatio n of the US and Canada ; August 12, 1970, a major non-agression treaty was signed b y the Federal Republic of Germany ; September 3, 1971, was signed the Quadripartit e Agreement on Berlin ; in May 1972 the German Soviet treaty was ratified by th e Bundestag ; and at the Moscow Summit (May 1972) promises were made that the USS R would engage in serious talks on Multilateral Balanced Force Reduction in Europe . The USSR and some East and West European States went to Helsinki eagerly, the U S went there reluctantly . The resulting Final Act was not a treaty, but a solem n promise to observe certain principles . The USSR obtained promises of the inviolability of the existing frontiers and of economic and scientific aid (in Baskets I and II) ; the West Europeans and the US, too, obtained provisions on human contacts , reunification of families, improvement in travel for personal and professiona l reasons, and " improvement of the circulation of, access to, and exchange o f information " in Basket III . The USSR and her leader Leonid I . Brezhnev personall y regarded the compromise Final Act as a diplomatic triumph . The USSR was no t worried about certain concessions in Principles VII and VIII in Basket I (Respec t for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought , conscience, religion and belief and Equal rights and self-determination of peoples) . Brezhnev felt that Principle VI (non-intervention in internal affairs) would b e protection enough . The US policymakers at first did not attach much significanc e to the CSCE Final Act . Ironically, it was Soviet citizens who came upon the idea that the huma n rights provisions of Basket III and especially of Basket I, Principle VII, should EXEC 2 be given teeth, especially in the light of Basket IV, which called for a Review Meeting in Belgrade in two years, in 1977 . Out of the Liberal Democratic Cente r of the multi-faceted dissent movement in the USSR (see Chapter 3), from the circl e around Academician Sakharov, emerged another physicist and brilliant organize r Yuri Orlov . Orlov had the idea that public (i .e ., non-secret) groups shoul d be formed in the Soviet Union and in as many other signatory countries a s possible to further the implementation of the Helsinki accords . They would accep t and investigate information brought to their attention by Soviet citizens an d in especially serious cases would call for authoritative investigations by inter - national bodies . Already in August 1975 a group of Soviet dissidents includin g Jewish activists had planted the idea of monitoring the implementation of th e Helsinki human rights provisions in the minds of a visiting American Congressiona l delegation . In May 1976 a double event took place . First, after many delay s due to the opposition of Secretary of State Dr . Kissinger, Senator Clifford P . Case of New Jersey, and his allies in the Senate and Mrs . Millicent Fenwick , also of New Jersey, and her allies in the House of Representatives were able t o establish and promptly fund the US Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (US CSCE) composed of six US Senators and six Representatives and thre e representatives of the Executive : one from the Department of State, one fro m Defense, and one from Commerce . Chairman of the US CSCE became The Hon . Dante B . Fascell, Democratic Representative from Florida . Second, in Moscow, May 12, 1977 , Orlov announced the formation of an eleven-member (Moscow) Public Group to Promote the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords, under himself as Chairman , and including such well-known dissenters as Mrs . Elena Bonner-Sakharov , Aleksander Ginzburg, Lyudmila Alekseeva, Malva Landa, Anatoly Shcharansky, an d former Major-General Petr Grigorenko (Petro Hryhorenko) . In preparation for the Belgrade Review Meeting, the private Moscow Helsink i Group plunged into publicizing violations of human rights in the USSR . At th e same time, the official US CSCE held brief hearings on East-West economi c cooperation prescribed in Basket II of the Final Act, then began to investigat e in great depth the implementation of Basket III and, even more, the violation s of Principle VII of Basket I . Another important development occurred which was not foreseen by eithe r American policymakers nor possibly even by the Soviet dissidents in Moscow . The drafters of Basket I had scrupulously tried to separate individual human rights (contained in Principle VII) from collective nationality rights of self - determination (Principle VIII) . But already the members of the Moscow Grou p (see Appendix, p . A-02) found that they could not neglect nationality rights : roughly one-fifth of all the titles of documents issued by the Moscow Grou p refer to nationality problems (see Appendix, p . A-07 ff) . Given the increasingly strained nationality relations in the Soviet Union (see Chapter 2) some non - Russian dissenters in the USSR decided to establish Helsinki Watch Committee s of their own, that would cooperate with the Moscow Group but would not b e organizationally tied to it and would not under any circumstances be subordinat e to it . (As it soon turned out, this suited the Moscow Group perfectly, for i t has had reservations about taking over any responsibility for what it considere d to be relatively inexperienced groupings .) EXEC 3 The first non-Russian Helsinki Watch Committee to be formed was th e Ukrainian Helsinki Group under Ukrainian writer Mykola Rudenko, an ex-membe r of Stalin's NKVD guard division, a political commissar in World War II an d Secretary of the Party organization of the Writers Union of Ukraine fro m 1947-1950 . It was formed November 9, 1976, and Rudenko had the good sense o f enlisting as one of its founder-members Major-General Hryhorenko, a Ukrainia n who together with several Jews and Russians was a charter member of the Mosco w Group . The second republican Helsinki Watch Committee was the Lithuanian on e (established November 25, 1976), the Georgian followed (January, 1977), and then the Armenian (April 1, 1977) . By and large the Ukrainian Group continued th e moderate nationalist dissent of the 1960 ' s : demands for cultural rights , protests against Russification, publicity given to prisoners of conscience , and similar . Some Ukrainian documents, however, deal with individual huma n rights (see Nos . 4, 8, 9, 11, pp . A-44 ff in Appendix) . The Ukrainian Group also protested against the Ukrainian SSR not being allowed to sign the Helsink i Final Act . The Lithuanian Group tried to unite the Lithuanian Catholic dissen t with the Lithuanian secular, cultural dissent and with Lithuanian Jewish dissent . The Lithuanian Group was the most cosmopolitan in its outlook, it attempted t o act as a nucleus for a regional Baltic Helsinki Watch Committee .
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