To know where we are at today we should look at where we were twenty years ago and what we have accomplished since the
Soviet Union broke apart in 1991.

On August 1, 1975, the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was signed in Helsinki. At that
time, many doubts and questions were raised about the rationale of signing one more accord between liberal democracies and
communist states. Why sign an accord on common security with a state, the Soviet Union, that had annexed independent states
such as the Baltics, and less than seven years prior, had invaded Czechoslovakia? Why pretend that both sides: liberal pluralist
democracies and the repressive communist states speak, the same language and give the same meaning to words like freedom
of speech, freedom of associations, cooperation and civil society?

For many, the Helsinki Accords were seen as another Western states' betrayal of the people living in the East. I was among
those who had many doubts twenty years ago. But the Helsinki Accords, soon after called simply "Helsinki," because and
important mechanism for defending human rights and civil rights under communism. The "stability and security" part of the
Helsinki Final Act was rendered meaningless a few years later when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, an invasion and war
that resulted in over a million casualties, several million displaced persons and instability in the region that lasts until today.

The "human dimension" of the Helsinki Accords became a tool, a weapon and a shied for those, both East and West, who
believed that citizens in every country have the right to behave as citizens and not as subjects. Within a few years Helsinki
Committees, grass root citizen groups that we today refer to as NGOs, were created in many countries to monitor the
compliance with the Helsinki Accord. In the communist countries, these were dissident groups made up of very courageous
people who risked their liberty and sometimes life, to monitor and report on the violations of human and civil rights. Often these
Committees were the seed of future civil societies. In the West, a special ethos was created in the years between 1973 and
1990 - a "Helsinki ethos" that transcended state borders, language and cultural barriers. When one spoke of "Helsinki" one
spoke of attempts to create a civil society under communism and of Western solidarity towards that endeavor.

What is interesting is that West and East, meaning liberal democracies and communist regimes, had different concepts of civic
society. As Gaspar Milos Tams, a former dissident and today a member of the Hungarian parliament noted, "in a liberal
society...civil order cannot be sustained without the activities of the citizens...without voluntary associations..and non-coercive
cooperation individuals would become atomized, disoriented, amoral and oblivious of duty. On the contrary," writes Tams, "the
worry in totalitarian countries was that without diversified, pluralistic, voluntary associations, the dutiful citizens of the totalitarian
state would became automatons, soulless executors of orders from above. The problem was not the peril inherent in too much
autonomy, but in too little." Thus, the notion of civil society under totalitarianism was directed against the state, while in liberal
democracies it was to complement the state.

This difference in approach, these different roots of civil society East and West remain, in a lesser form, even today, and are
often the base for discussion on what is the role of civil society, how do we define it, what are non-governmental organizations,
and how do we define them, and where do we delineate between politics and non-politics. What does it mean to be an NGO
"independent of government and political groups." After all, in liberal democracies there is a much clearer definition of politics
as a clear demarcation line between state and society. The term politics is reserved primarily for state and party activities, while
under communism politics was both everything and nothing, and societies emerging from totalitarianism have to discover for
themselves where politics start and end.

This process of rediscovery will take time and adjustment. Right now, we are witnessing the rebuilding of civic society on the
rubble of communism and we are witness to technical and practical confusion. On one hand, the reawakening of societies
forces them to reinvent everything, and rebuild everything, including politics. We should not be surprised that there is a grey
sphere where civic society and the state are intermingled. We should accept t it as a fact of life that once in a while an NGO
becomes a political party and a political party transforms itself into an NGO. Once in a while a civic activist becomes a
politician, even president, and some politicians leave politics and move into civic activities. This turmoil will last for a while. It is
a normal process during peaceful revolution. What is important is to try to define and legislate in the most precise way, who is
who and who is doing what.

On the other hand, politicians and the government have, in many instance, been quite slow in proposing legislation that would
allow the non-governmental sector to develop itself. Bad legislation, unclear legislation, restraining legislation, or simple lack of
legislation has slowed down the process of finding the appropriate place for NGOs in society. Some governments do not care
enough, others do not want to relinquish power, and others pass legislation without consideration.

A very important question is how to be independent and how to maintain independence from the state and government. A
foundation for voters education, a charity and a cultural association are all examples of NGOs. However, in post-communist
states we also have borderline cases that require refection. In 1944, the Soviet state deported several nationalities from their
homelands – the Crimean Tatars were one such example. Soon after 1956, after the first liberalization, the Crimean Tartars
began to rebuild their community, to organize themselves and to demand the right to return to Crimea. After 1975, their cause
was adopted by the Helsinki Committees in the Soviet Union and abroad. The Crimean Tartars represent a remarkable case of
rebuilding civic society from scratch. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, the Crimean Tartars were possibly the best largest
example of a grass roots NGO in the Soviet Union. They ran programs in civic, cultural, economic and developmental
education. Their leaders were deported to work camps, but the Crimean Tartars keep on rebuilding their society. After the fall
of the Soviet Union, they began to come back to Crimea and now number over two hundred thousand. They have their own,
democratically elected and democratically functioning parliament - the mejlis. Are they an NGO?

We have seen in the last five years an incredible proliferation of non-governmental organization in the post-communist world
where even the family was considered by the state to be a dangerous and unwelcome formation. The blooming of NGOs is the
best proof that human beings want to organize their socio-political environment themselves and that in doing so, their
imagination, resourcefulness and energy have no limits. People, groups of people, communities, and nations are working to take
their lives and their futures into their own hands