This essay is about the "curious grapevine," an extraordinary tale of how NGOs, through their persuasion, have made human rights a major item in international discourse in the media, state chancellories, and international institutions.

Korey addresses the increased social dislocation of minority groups that accompanied freedom in post-totalitarian Europe. He argues that glasnost and the revolutions of 1989 legitimized new brands of nationalism that included threads of anti-Semitism, racism, and xenophobia.

Korey focuses on the U.S. delegation to the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and credits the success of the Helsinki Accord to U.S. adroit negotiation strategies, beginning with the Carter administration.

Korey provides a description of the long struggle for ratification of the Genocide Convention, detailing decades of work by a committee of fifty-two nongovernmental organizations lobbying the Senate and the American Bar Association, the treaty's key opponent.

Korey traces the evolution of the dispute over the Helsinki Accord and discusses Gorbachev's uneven attempts to improve the Soviet Union's recognition of human rights.