Conversation between Gorbachev and Nemeth regarding the priorities of the Central Committee of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party.

Conversation between Gorbachev and Miklos Nemeth about protecting Hungarian borders, Hungary's decision to establish diplomatic relations with Israel, and the Soviet Union's potential normalization of relations with Israel.

Politburo meeting centered on Comecon and the importance of maintaining fruitful trade relationships with other socialist nations.

Gorbachev and Kohl discuss relations with the United States, Kohl's upcoming visit to Poland, and the status of reforms in various socialist countries.

Gorbachev and Kohl share their impressions of the newly elected George Bush and discuss events in Eastern Europe.

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."

Record of Conversation between President M. S. Gorbachev and Miklós Németh 12 , Member of the HSWP CC Politburo, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the People’s Republic of Hungary regarding the establishment of a multiparty system in Hungary