INTERPRETATIONS OF THE MEANING AND THE EFFECTS OF THE CONFERence on Security and Cooporation in Europe (CSCE) and its product, the Final Act signed at Helsinki in August 1975, are of sufficient variety to suit anybody's taste. Governments on both sides have hailed the Final Act as a great landmark, the opening of a new era of international relations in Europe based on high principle. Some of the same governments and their spokesmen, mainly on the Eastern side, have also called it the ineluctable result of the changed balance of forces in Europe; and among observers in the West who have agreed with that proposition some have argued that the Soviet Union has by Helsinki prepared the way for the domination or ‘Finlandization’ of the nations of Western Europe, and that the latter are too stupid or too complaisant or too scared to do anything about it. Then there are those in the West who feel neither satisfaction nor alarm but see the whole negotiation as much ado about nothing, changing neither the existing balance nor the outstanding differences.