ATTENTION: CHANGEMENT DE SALLES! LE WORKSHOP A LIEU à L'ESPACE GÜGGI (MIS08 0101)

The Conference for Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) born of the Helsinki Agreements (1973-75) is often described as one of the main diplomatic achievements of the détente era, and a crucial milestone towards ending the Cold War. Yet not only diplomats played a part in the process. Non-state actors and NGOs also did their share by lobbying CSCE staff and conference attendees for human Rights and Religious Freedom violations behind the Iron Curtain or they started political discussion processes in the public sphere of their respective countries. Drawing on the most recent research on this topic (Badalassi and Snyder, The CSCE and the End of the Cold War: Diplomacy, Societies and Human Rights, 2019), this workshop aims at further exploring human rights activists involved in the Helsinki process, at the interface between the Dissent and the Western public, and between state and other private networks. The focus of this workshop is on the religion, on religious networks and actors who advocate religious freedom and human rights in the CSCE process.
A first workshop on this topic was held online in October 2021, and a first network of researchers was formed. A report on this has been published by Marie Snedker on HSozuKult . In preparation for a larger research project and an international final conference in Helsinki in 2025, this second workshop is held in presence and partly hybrid. It focuses on the following topics: History and Networks of the Helsinki Committees and Helsinki Groups since the 1970s (in the USSR, in Central- and Eastern Europe), religious negotiation processes and controversies around Human Rights in the Helsinki, process contributions from the Neutral States and their NGOs and Religious Actors (Switzerland, Finland, Austria, Sweden, the Vatican), concepts of European Security Policy discussed by Churches, Ecumenical Organisations and other Religious Actors, “Division of Labour” between Ecumenical Organizations, Churches and other Organisations, as well as first-hand witnesses and journalists, who reported around the Helsinki- process at the time.

9:00 – Welcome
9:15 – Introduction by Katharina Kunter (Univ. Helsinki), Farewell to the Idea of Neutrality: Historical perspectives on churches and the new geopolitical challenges in Europe

10:00 – 11:30 : Panel I: The Catholic Church and the challenge of peace (1960’s – today)

Moderation: Irena Vaišvilaitė

Kim Christiaens (KU Leuven), Catholic engagement in international campaigns for European Security and Cooperation: Perspectives from the Belgian Peace Movement during the 1960s and 1970s

Roland Cerny-Werner (PLUS University), Preservation of Creation or Power-political repositioning in the World? The Vatican as peacebroker in the CSCE-process

Massimo Faggioli (Villanova Univ.), “We need a new spirit of Helsinki”: The Holy See and the war in Ukraine


11:45 – 12:45 : Panel II: Monitoring and networking within the Helsinki Process

Moderation: Thomas Fischer

Stéphanie Roulin (Fribourg Univ.), The Swiss Helsinki Committee: international ambitions of a monitoring group between State and private networks

Nina Hechenblaikner (Innsbruck Univ., per MS Teams), The Importance of networks. Human Rights at the third CSCE Follow-up meeting in Vienna (1986-1989)


12:45 – 14:00 : Lunch break

14:15 – 15:15 : Panel III: Christian groups East and West of the Iron Curtain

Moderation: Katharina Kunter

Irena Vaišvilaitė (Vilnius Univ.): Catholics and other Christian groups in the Soviet Union versus Helsinki process
Erik Sidenvall (Lund Univ.), Swedish evangelical ‘low level’ politics and the Helsinki process: Engaging with Soviet Baptists in the 1970s and 1980s

15:15 – 15:45 : Break



15:45 – 16:45 : Panel IV : Geopolitical challenges in Sweden and Finland

Moderation: Matthieu Gillabert and Stéphanie Roulin

Aryo Makko (University of Stockholm, per MS Teams): Multilateralism and the Shaping of an 'Active Foreign Policy': Sweden during the preparatory phase of the CSCE

Markku Ruotsila (Univ. Helsinki/Tampere): Détente, Finlandization, and Resistance: Finnish Churches and the Helsinki Process in Transnational Perspective

16:45 – 17:15 : Concluding remarks