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Soviet soldier taking a photograph of another soldier in Red Square, Moscow, 1959

Eastern Europe

Soviet Union

Aerial view of National Mall

North America

United States

Cuba's National Capitol Building, January 2010.

Central America and Caribbean

Cuba

The Palace of the Republic (Palast der Republik) in Berlin

Eastern Europe

East Germany

Aerial photograph of CIA headquarters

United States. Central Intelligence Agency

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East German Uprising

Executive Committee of the National Security Committee during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Cuban Missile Crisis

Photograph of Gorbachev-Bush summit at Malta, 1989

End of the Cold War

Anastas Mikoyan in 1959

Mikoyan, Anastas Ivanovich

1895- 1978

Portrait of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, China, 1972.

East Asia

China

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Central Africa

Angola

A photo of Joseph Stalin from 1943

Stalin, Joseph

1879- 1953

Portrait of Mao Zedong from propaganda poster

Mao, Zedong

1893- 1976

Sino-Soviet Relations

Mikhail Gorbachev, 1986

Gorbachev, Mikhail Sergeevich

1931- 2022

Making of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945-1950

Fidel Castro, 1959.

Castro, Fidel

1926- 2016

South African Nuclear History

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June 27, 1975	US National Security Council Meeting Minutes on Angola President Ford is briefed on the situation in Angola and requests possible options that the US could pursue to be made ready.
April 5, 1956	From the Journal of Ambassador P. F. Yudin, Record of Conversation with Mao Zedong, 31 March 1956 Soviet Ambassador Yudin discusses the 20th Congress of the CPSU with Mao, including Khrushchev's "secret speech" denouncing Stalin and his cult of personality. Mao had already seen a copy and discusses mistakes in Stalin's policy towards China at length.
March 30, 1983	CIA Report, 'New Information on South Africa’s Nuclear Program and South African-Israeli Nuclear and Military Cooperation' (redacted) CIA report summaries new information on Israel-South African nuclear cooperation. According to the report, South Africa formerly launched its weapons program in 1973, and paused it in 1979 following the international discovery of the Kalahari nuclear test site. Military cooperation between South Africa and Israel is believed to be extensive, with continual contact between personnel and the large-scale sale of arms. Aside from the South African sale of depleted uranium to Israel in the mid-1970s, the CIA had no hard evidence of nuclear cooperation between the two.
December 18, 1980	Memorandum from Chairman, Non-Proliferation Coordinating Committee James Malone, 'Recommendations for the Reagan Administration Non-Proliferation Policy' James Malone writes to US Secretary of Energy designate James Edwards with recommendations from the Non-Prolifreation Coordinating Committee for the Reagan administration representing the views of nuclear industry groups.
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.