Introduction

The ten years from 1965 to 1975 witnessed a deep transformation of the bipolar international system of the Cold War. The Vietnam War and the Prague Spring – despite its quick end through Soviet intervention – demonstrated the limits of the two superpowers. They were constrained to embark on a wide-ranging détente policy, which culminated in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreements of 1972. At the same time, this very détente opened new venues for European countries, with French policy toward the U.S.S.R. and German Ostpolitik being the most evident examples. For the first time since the 1950s, Western Europe actually began to participate in the shaping of the Cold War. The same could not be said of Eastern Europe, but it was the case that ferments were beginning to establish themselves there, ferments which would ultimately lead to the astounding changes of 1989/90: the Prague Spring, the 1970 uprisings in Gdansk, and the rise of the dissident movement in general. This last process was directly linked to the far-reaching event that marked the end of this momentous period – the Helsinki Conference. We now realize that the sudden end of the Cold War and of Soviet communism in 1989 and 1990 did not happen only through a set of favorable circumstances but had been prepared beforehand by the deep changes inside the international system since the 1970s. Although it was not realized at that time, the ebbing of the discipline imposed on both camps by the Cold War would also allow older problems in the European system to rise to the surface once again, the clearest instance being the serious disorders in Croatia in 1971.