Book contents
- Poland’s Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights
- Human Rights in History
- Poland’s Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Geographical Regions
- Note on Cited Primary Documents
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Rise of Dissent in Poland
- 2 Dissent and the Politics of Human Rights
- 3 The Principle of Noninterference as Laid Down in the Helsinki Final Act
- 4 The End of the Ideological Age
- 5 Solidarity, Human Rights, and Anti-Totalitarianism in France
- 6 The “Bedrock of Human Rights”
- 7 Letters from Prison
- 8 Lech Wałęsa, the Symbolism of the Nobel Peace Prize, and Global Human Rights Culture
- 9 General Pinochecki
- 10 Human Rights and the End of the Cold War
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Human Rights and the End of the Cold War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2021
- Poland’s Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights
- Human Rights in History
- Poland’s Solidarity Movement and the Global Politics of Human Rights
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Geographical Regions
- Note on Cited Primary Documents
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 The Rise of Dissent in Poland
- 2 Dissent and the Politics of Human Rights
- 3 The Principle of Noninterference as Laid Down in the Helsinki Final Act
- 4 The End of the Ideological Age
- 5 Solidarity, Human Rights, and Anti-Totalitarianism in France
- 6 The “Bedrock of Human Rights”
- 7 Letters from Prison
- 8 Lech Wałęsa, the Symbolism of the Nobel Peace Prize, and Global Human Rights Culture
- 9 General Pinochecki
- 10 Human Rights and the End of the Cold War
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This chapter assesses the question whether dissident human rights activism had an impact on the end of the Cold War and the fall of Communism. Focusing on the situation in Poland, it argues that human rights activism had a threefold impact on the end of the Cold War: First, the Polish activists’ status as human rights icons provided them with the authority to be the government’s interlocutors at round table talks which, even if accidentally, triggered the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe. Second, human rights activism also made sure that the West, and especially the United States, provided material support for the Polish opposition movement thus helping sustain it through the 1980s. Third, because of dissident demands to uphold human rights in Eastern Europe, there were strong external pressures on Poland to implement reforms. Yet by contrasting the Western responses to the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981 to Western behavior in the late 1980s, the chapter shows that Western human rights policies were neither the automatic result of the 1970s human rights revolution nor of Cold War policies but of an activism that occurred largely during the 1980s.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021