Cable from the US embassy in Prague reporting on the establishment of a new organization for Czech independents, the "Civic Forum," and the publication of a list of demands.

The US embassy in Prague reports on the brutal suppression of the Czech students' demonstration.

Cable from the US embassy in Prague reports on an American woman's account of the November 17 demonstrations and the death of a Czech student.

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.

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."

Memorandum to Alexander Yakovlev from the Bogomolov Commission (Marina Sylvanskaya) describing the changes in individual Eastern European countries and their impact on the Soviet Union

The Civic Forum’s Exposition of its Position in Public Life with a Call for Nonviolence, Tolerance and Dialogue, Prague

The Civic Forum’s Position on the Negotiations of its Representatives with Prime Minister Ladislav Adamec, Prague

Letter from the Civic Forum to US President George Bush and USSR General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev calling for condemnation of the 1968 events

The Declaration of Civic Forum Representative Václav Havel on Wenceslas Square, Prague calling for a general strike