a. the Soviet Union
Contrary to American and Soviet expectations, however, Article VII of the Helsinki Accords, which affirmed human rights and basic freedoms, wound up signifying a new direction in international relations. Political dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe drew inspiration from the agreement in their campaigns for political change in their societies, while a growing chorus of their supporters in the West invoked Helsinki as a new basis for activism. American politicians took particular interest in the rights of Soviet subjects. In 1974, Senator Henry Jackson and Representative Charles Vanik introduced a law withholding trade privileges from nations that denied their citizens the right of emigration. Designed primarily to protest Soviet restrictions on the USSR's Jewish population, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment (which passed unanimously in both houses of Congress) appealed to broadly shared American beliefs about freedom and mobility. At the same time, it united critics of détente from both sides of the political aisle. Conservatives who felt that Kissinger was accommodating the spread of communism joined liberals who felt that he was turning a blind eye to abuses of individual rights. The specific right of Soviet Jews to emigrate became a rallying cry and a launching pad for a number of political developments that emerged in the 1970s: renewed anti-communism, revived American Jewish identity, and a new global movement to hold national governments accountable to universal standards of human rights.