1 August

'[The Helsinki Accords] gradually became a manifesto of the dissident and liberal movement ... What this meant was that the people who lived under these systems - at least the more courageous - could claim official permission to say what they thought.' _ John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (2005)

Today in 1975, 35 leaders from Europe and North America met in Helsinki to sign the Helsinki Accords. Among the articles was a guarantee to protect human rights, including freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief. This would play a significant role in the collapse of Communism, giving dissidents a valuable human-rights tool to use in the eastern Europe of the late 1980s.