A fascinating insight into Cold War era myths and power narratives gleaned from archival materials from the 1975 Helsinki Conference of world leaders. Done in a satirical and witty manner, The Helsinki Effect was condensed from hundreds of hours of video recordings and previously secret document fragments revealing the power drama on the great diplomatic stage.

For a long time the Helsinki Conference was considered to be an endless diplomatic struggle without any tangible consequence. Solzhenitsyn called it the funeral of Eastern Europe while the New York Times stated it was “misguided and empty”. But in looking back now, this conference changed the world by becoming one of the early milestones on the road to the collapse of the Soviet Union and a Europe without an Iron Curtain.

In English, Finnish, French and German with subtitles in Latvian and English.

Although the Helsinki Final Act signed at the end of the conference indirectly recognized post-World War II frontiers, the agreement included commitments to human rights and fundamental freedoms that became the basis for the formation of various Eastern Bloc dissident organizations and human rights groups in Russia, Lithuania, Georgia, Czechoslovakia and other countries. In Latvia, Helsinki-86 was the first informal human rights group that openly expressed opposition to the Soviet regime. In 1987 they organized the placing of flowers at the Freedom Monument and other actions that began the third Latvian National Awakening.