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December 11, 1980	Letter from US Naval Research Lab Director Alan Berman on Hydroacoustic Evidence on the Vela incident Alan Berman writes to US Office of Science and Technology Policy senior advisor John Marcum on hydroacoustic evidence on the Vela incident. Based on sounds recorded, it appeared that a large explosion occurred south of Ascension Island.
January 21, 1979	US Interagency Intelligence Memorandum, 'The 22 September 1979 Event' Forwarded to Ralph Earle, Director of US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. The Interagency Intelligence Memorandum on the 22 September 1979 explosion, or Vela Incident, concludes that it was a nuclear explosion.
November 9, 1989	Conversation between Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa In this extraordinary conversation, Solidarity’s leader fears the collapse of the Wall would distract West Germany’s attention - and money - to the GDR, at the time when Poland, the trail-blazer to the post-communist era in Eastern Europe, desperately needed both. "Events are moving too fast," Walesa said, and only hours later, the Wall fell, and Kohl had to cut his Poland visit short to scramble back to Berlin, thus proving Walesa’s fear correct.
July 25, 1989	Report of the President of Hungary Rezso Nyers and General Secretary Karoly Grosz on Talks with Gorbachev in Moscow (excerpts) President of People’s Republic of Hungary, Rezso Nyers, and General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, Karoly Grosz, report on their talks with Gorbachev in Moscow, 24-25 July, 1989. The excerpts contains economic reformer Nyers’ assessment of the political situation in Hungary, and first among the factors that "can defeat the party," he lists "the past, if we let ourselves [be] smeared with it." The memory of the revolution of 1956 and its bloody repression by the Soviets was Banquo’s ghost, destroying the legitimacy of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, just as 1968 in Prague and 1981’s martial law in Poland and all the other Communist "blank spots" of history came back in 1989 to crumble Communist ideology. For their part, the Communist reformers (including Gorbachev) did not quite know how to respond as events accelerated in 1989, except not to repeat 1956.
June 13, 1989	Excerpts from the Opening Full Session of the Hungarian National Roundtable Negotiations Transcribed from previously unpublished video recordings, these discussions point to the unwritten "rules" of mutual civility that arose in the nonviolent dissident movements and found an echo among the Communist reformers during the negotiated revolutions of 1989. For example, Dr. Istvan Kukorelli from the Patriotic People’s Front proposes to "refrain from questioning the legitimacy of each other, since the legitimacy of all of us is debatable. It is a question which belongs to the future - who will be given credit by history and who will be forgotten."
June 5, 1989	Transcript of the Central Committee Secretariat Meeting of the Polish United Workers Party (PZPR) On the day after Solidarity had swept Poland’s first open elections, ultimately winning 99 of 100 Senate seats, the Polish Communists vent their shock and dismay ("a bitter lesson," "the party are not connected with the masses," "We trusted the Church and they turned out to be Jesuits" were typical comments). Comrade Kwasniewski (who was later elected President of Poland) remarks that "It’s well known that also party members were crossing out our candidates" (only two out of 35 Party candidates survived the epidemic of X’s). But they see no choice but to negotiate a coalition government, and specifically "[w]arn against attempts at destabilization, pointing at the situation in China" -- since the Tiananmen massacre occurred the same day as the Polish elections, the road not taken.
March 24, 1989	Conversation between M.S. Gorbachev and Karoly Grosz, General Secretary of the Hungarian Socialist Workers Party, March 23-24, 1989 These conversations reveal Gorbachev’s contradictions, as the Soviet leader proclaims again that the Brezhnev doctrine is dead and military interventions should be "precluded in the future, yet at the same time, tries to set "boundaries" for the changes in Eastern Europe as "the safekeeping of socialism and assurance of stability."
June 14, 1948	Central Intelligence Agency Report, "Effects of Soviet Restrictions on the US Position in Berlin" Describes effect of Soviet restrictive measures in Berlin on US intelligence and propaganda activities and on operations of the joint military government.
July 4, 1967	A Report from the Mexican Embassy in Havana, 4 July 1967 A visit of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin from 26-30 June 1967 prompts this report from the Mexican Embassy in Havanna to the Secretary of Foreign Relations in Mexico City. They discuss: the position assumed by the Cuban Government and Communist Party in relation to Latin America, the Middle East and Vietnam, the internal administration of Cuba and the political operation in Cuba.
July 11, 1978	Journal of Soviet Ambassador Puzanov, Memorandum of Conversation with Hafizullah Amin and Delegation of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Soviet Ambassador Puzanov introduces Hafizullah Amin at the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to a delegation from the USSR Academy of Sciences, headed by the President of the Academy of Sciences of the Tajik SSR, M.S. Asimov. They discuss the state of scientific research in Afghanistan and future scientific cooperation with the Soviet Union.