Has Russia's invasion of sovereign Ukraine, with its attendant atrocities, relegated the 1975 Helsinki agreement and its advocacy of human rights to the dustbin of history? Two very different books, both by former Moscow correspondents of major Western newspapers, disagree. Peter Osnos, a former correspondent for The Washington Post, wants us “to believe [that] the Helsinki accords changed the world” by advancing both human rights and security. Richard Davy, who was a correspondent for The Times of London, is not so certain.
The first book is primarily a memoir highlighting the contributions by the author, his wife, and his father-in-law, U.S. ambassador Albert W. Sherer, to the shaping of the Helsinki process and the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) in its early stages. It includes little on CSCE that is not already known but sheds light on the trajectory of the Helsinki Watch group, a non-governmental...