ABSTRACT
In its strict usage and proper employment, the “boomerang” is a very accurate and purposeful weapon indeed, a missile “thrown so as to hit an object in a different direction from that of projection, or so as to return to or behind the starting point.” The so-called “Final Act” of Helsinki had no real finality about it at all, and the diplomats went on trying to finalize further in Geneva and Belgrade and now Madrid, all in the interests of “European Peace and Security.” For a brief moment in both Prague and Moscow there was the feeling that “Basket Three” of Helsinki was providing a kind of new Magna Carta. The “Carta” movement was silenced. One sometimes can feel bitter enough in the face of the horrendous repression to suspect that due to the illusions of Helsinki more individuals were persecuted than would otherwise have been the case.
