aug 1, 1975 - The Helsinki Accords, or the Helsinki Final Act is signed - a major move to secure detente.

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"Begun by the Kremlin in an effort to legitimise Soviet control in that part of the world (Eastern Europe), the Helsinki process became instead the basis for legitimising opposition to Soviet rule." (Gaddis 2006, p. 191)

"The conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe opened in Helsinki on July 30, 1975. Brezhnev dozed through its many speeches, and two days later he, Ford, and the leaders of thirty-three other states signed the long and complex document that had brought them together. The consequences, on all sides, were unexpected. As Kissinger later put it: Rarely has a diplomatic process so illuminated the limitations of human foresight" (Gaddis 2006, p. 188)

"•Liberals and conservatives alike denounced Ford and Kissinger for having abandoned the cause of human rights…pursuing détente was hardly worth it if it meant perpetuating injustice by recognising Soviet control in Eastern Europe." (Gaddis 2006, p. 189)
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Helsinki became in short, a legal and moral trap. Having pressed the US and its allies to commit themselves in writing to recognising existing boundaries in Eastern Europe, Brezhnev could hardly repudiate what HE had agreed to in the same document – also in writing – with respect to human rights. Without realizing the implications, he thereby handed his critics a standard, based on universal principles of justice, rooted in international law, independent of Marxist-Leninist ideology, against which they could evaluate the behaviour of his and other communist regimes." (Gaddis 2006, p. 190)

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