Three Years At The East-West Divide

The periodic reviews of the Final Act of the CSCE in Helsinki have provided a rare forum for official spokesmen of both sides to debate East/West issues frankly and for the public record. Ambassador M. Kampelman was the American representative at the Madrid reviews that ran from October 1980 to September 1983, a tense period of East/West history in which Poland's Solidarity movement was crushed and martial law imposed there. This account of that review meeting, from the preparatory sessions to the final assessment, provides great insight into what has become known as the Helsinki process.