BACKGROUND: CSCE history yet to be written
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By Kaius Niemi
The road to the signing of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Helsinki in 1975 was a complicated process. In the background of the CSCE was an initiative by the Soviet Union, which Finland acted on at the initiative of President Urho Kekkonen in 1969.
After lengthy overtures, negotiations at the ambassadorial level began in the Espoo Dipoli in November 1969. The actual conference began in Finlandia Hall in the summer of 1973 at the Foreign Minister level. After that, civil servants worked in Geneva for two years. The work culminated in the meeting at Finlandia Hall in 1975.
An actual history of the CSCE is still to be written, although it has been discussed extensively by researchers and in contemporary memoirs. An international conference of researchers on the subject had been planned for next autumn, but the project foundered over a lack of funding. A similar gathering is to be held in Switzerland at the beginning of September.
The actual archives concerning the CSCE have been open for some years now. There do not seem to be any great secrets related to the history of the CSCE meetings, says researcher Juhana Aunesluoma of the Department of Political History at the University of Helsinki.
"The most interesting questions are linked with how we ended up with the CSCE, and what the later impact of the conference was."
The Soviet Union had put forward the idea of a European security conference in 1954. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union presented a memorandum to Finland proposing the convening of a security conference, notes veteran diplomat Max Jakobson in his book Pelon ja Toivon aika ("A Time of Fear and Hope"). Other European countries received a similar memo.
Jakobson says that he and Kekkonen concluded that Finland’s status as a neutral country would be strengthened if Finland were to host the meeting.
Convening the conference was difficult, as the Soviet origin of the initiative was generally known, writes political scientist, Dr. Klaus Törnudd in his book Turvallisuus on oven avaamista ("Security is opening a door").
"Especially in the preparatory phases, the Soviet Union had a tendency to take on a patronising and pushy attitude", Törnudd says.
He denies any suggestion that the Finns had acted as errand boys without a will of their own during the Geneva phase.
"If the other delegations in Geneva had known about Finland’s contacts with the Soviet Union in this connection, we would easily have been labelled as lackeys of a great power, but we had our own motives and a clear conscience."
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 26.5.2005
More on this subject:
 World leaders' note pads give psychological insight into CSCE conference 30 years ago
Helsingin Sanomat
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