Helmut Schmidt’s Germany helped to found several multilateral institutions in the mid-1970s. Chapter 14 opens with the European Council, a thrice-annual gathering of EC-9 leaders that reasserted the primacy of European nation-states over supranational governance. Schmidt reconciled with Britain, acceding to the Regional Fund in hopes of swaying a British referendum on EC membership. The CSCE summit, held in Helsinki, was a milestone for East-West détente – though Bonn’s relations with the USSR remained strained, even as improvements with Poland were achieved. The Federal Republic fell into recession, and Schmidt fretted about Global South proposals for a New International Economic Order. Bonn’s response was to court major countries individually, highlighting Germany’s interest in positive trade relations while loosening controls on weapons exports and nuclear commerce. Economic anxiety also animated Schmidt’s urgent demands on allies to cooperate in staving off protectionism. Informal coordination with Britain, France, and the United States became commonplace, a more structured grouping, the G-7 (adding Japan, Italy, and soon Canada), reestablished confidence in Western leadership.

From the mid-1970s onward, the Soviet Union’s refusal to allow Jews to emigrate became a key human rights issues in East-West diplomacy. Chapter 4 investigates efforts by the Reagan administration, members of Congress, and NGOs to support Soviet Jewish emigration as a fundamental human right during the 1980s. The chapter traces the role of human rights and Jewish emigration in the administration’s foreign policy before summarizing the extensive actions both liberal and conservative members of Congress undertook in support of Soviet Jews. The chapter demonstrates how the administration and a large bipartisan coalition in Congress formed a generally cooperative relationship despite some strategic disagreements. Certain members of Congress urged stronger public criticism of the Soviet Union and a linkage between progress on Jewish emigration and economic and security issues. The chapter argues that members of Congress contributed to keeping Jewish emigration on the political agenda and increased the political costs for Reagan should he fail to deliver on the issue. It also demonstrates that Reagan used congressional concern for Jewish emigration as leverage in negotiations with the Soviets. The chapter concludes that the issue of Jewish emigration facilitated a continued institutionalization of human rights concerns in US foreign policy.

During the long nineteenth century, the Nordic countries witnessed economic growth, the industrial revolution and the prominent expansion of the bourgeois classes. The growing need for entertainment explains the popularity and increase in production of operettas from the 1850s onwards. Jacques Offenbach and his satirical operettas enjoyed success in Copenhagen at the Folketeatret. During the great Lehár craze, Danish performers toured Scandinavian cities. By the 1870s, Christiania (now Oslo) in Norway also had an operetta epidemic, and new venues opened for the active Danish and Swedish companies and some domestic initiatives. The first production of Offenbach’s Orfeus i underjorden in Stockholm was staged by Pierre Deland in 1860. An elegant new venue, the Oscarsteatern (built in 1906) had its first major success with Lehár’s Den glada änkan in 1907. A Swedish Theatre was erected in Helsinki 1860 and opened with Deland’s production of Orfeus i underjorden. Helsinki also accommodated Russian officers and their families, who found entertainment first in the Arkadia-theatre, where several Russian-language operetta productions were given. Operettas in Finnish found their best home at the Kansan Näyttämö (People’s Stage) founded in 1907 in Helsinki.