Documentary directors occasionally produce a film that is an instant classic. Arthur Franck’s entertaining and deeply insightful The Helsinki Effect is one of the few.
His film, which focuses on the gruelling diplomatic process that culminated after years of talks at the Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), is perfect for today’s troubled times when so much in the post-World War Two order appears to be crumbling before our eyes.
Once a secret
Franck directly addresses the audience in his acutely observed narration, noting that for all the thousands of hours of archive footage he has access to, images from diplomatic conferences are essentially dry and boring—hours and hours of speeches in dull and dusty venues by mostly dull and dreary characters.
The once secret memos that give a clearer picture of what went on behind the scenes help enliven the plot, and the artful use of #AI to create simulated voices for key characters—principally Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev and US foreign policy supremo Henry Kissinger (who died only a couple of years ago at the age of 100)—bring the events of half a century ago to life.
The conference was Brezhnev’s idea, and his aim was simple: to secure a written guarantee that Europe’s borders would be respected. In the late 1960s, no one in Europe really questioned the post-war boundaries pushed by #Stalin at the #Yalta Conference# of 1945, which resulted in an #Iron Curtain# being drawn between Eastern and Western Europe, as Churchill put it in his famous 1946 speech in Fulton, Missouri.
But Soviet insecurities nibbled away at Brezhnev, and he pushed European leaders to agree on a post-war security architecture, recognising the inviolability of existing state boundaries.
Documentary directors occasionally produce a film that is an instant classic.
Three «baskets»
The Europeans eventually agreed, but not before lengthy preliminary talks in Geneva conceived of three «baskets» to be addressed in the agreement: on borders, economics, and human rights. Basket 3—which covered #human rights#, the free press, and the free movement of people—was most problematic for the #Kremlin. Brezhnev and his Politburo wanted nothing to do with it. It threatened domestic affairs, they complained. But the Europeans, under the guidance of wily Finnish president #Uhro Kekkonen#, who had agreed to host the final act conference, insisted. Such was Brezhnev’s determination to make his mark and leave a lasting legacy, he agreed.
Franck enjoys himself with Brezhnev’s apparent delight that he had put one over on the Europeans and secured the Soviet Union’s security—and that of its satellite states seized in #Eastern Europe# at the end of the war. He finds some super images of US President #Gerald Ford# (the US and Canada were also parties to the agreement) emerging from a meeting room into the bright light of a warm Helsinki day with a beaming Brezhnev by his side. Brezhnev has just signed the final act and can barely conceal his glee. Little did he know it, intones the director, but the impact of Basket 3 on stimulating the dissident movement in #Russia, the Baltics, #Czechoslovakia and elsewhere would draw a direct line to the collapse of Soviet control in the late 1980s and eventual dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
But all that was to come.
Kissinger thought little of the Helsinki process and dismissed it as boring and irrelevant. All the same, he showed up and sat through boring final speeches that had been limited to 20 minutes, but did not stop Romanian dictator #Nicolae Ceaucescu# droning on for more than 35 minutes.
Franck dialogues with the AI voices of Brezhnev and Kissinger to flesh out the story with direct quotations from minutes of a secret meeting held 50 or more years ago.
He draws the viewer into an implicit sense that we are at the table. And this is what the #Helsinki Agreement# did. What Brezhnev thought was a tidy bit of housekeeping was greeted by ordinary men and women as a huge opportunity, and they saw a cementing of the notion of democracy and freedom in Europe.
OSCE
The conference led to the establishment of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which continues to work to this day as a key international watchdog for democracy.
Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, a man with no diplomatic experience and a puerile veneration for President Putin (just watch his March 21 cosy chat with #Tucker Carlson#, if you can stand it), thinks Moscow deserves to keep the four Ukrainian regions it recognised as Russian just before the start of the invasion in February 2022. He says that subsequent elections showed that most people wanted to join Russia. Once a small problem, the OSCE immediately condemned the «breach of international law» inherent in the de facto annexation. When the elections came in September 2022, it stated: «…any so-called ‘referenda’ planned by or with the support of the forces illegally exercising de facto control in the occupied territories of #Ukraine would be in contravention of international standards and obligations under international humanitarian law, and their outcome will therefore have no legal force.»
Back in 1975, Brezhnev thought his art of the deal was securing a great business opportunity.
We can only hope that those who currently practice the so-called art of the deal will eventually have as much ‘success’ as Brezhnev had, though he did not live to see the end result of his handiwork.
