"This collection of interviews, diaries, and scholarly analyses is the first comprehensive look at Russian sentiments in the wake of the Warsaw Pact occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. It features the reflections of Russian soldiers, dissidents, and journalists. --Provided by publisher.

Prologue: The Russian "Prague Spring" / Josef Pazderka -- We came to carry out a mission: Soviet soldiers and their views of the invasion / Daniel Povolný -- We saved the world from a Third World War: An Interview with General Pavel Kosenkoo / Josef Pazderka -- Of course it makes one feel sorry: an interview with General Eduard Vorobyev / Josef Pazderka -- We were uninvited guests: a Soviet paratrooper recalls the invasion / Josef Pazderka -- Unrest in the backwoods. On some psychological aspects in the perception of the 1968 events in the periphery of Russia / Leonid Shinkarev -- The events in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Embassy in Prague in 1967-68 / Olga Pavlenko -- KGB and the Czechoslovak crisis of 1968 / Nikita V. Petrov -- The fate of some Russian journalists in August 1968 / Dmitry Beloshevsky -- "1968 changed us": an interview with Vladimir Lukin / Josef Pazderka -- Gorbachev's people from Dejvice, Prague: The Prague Editorial Board of the World Marxist Review through the eyes of Petr Pithart / Petr Pithart -- "I tried to talk to them": an interview with the journalist Vladlen Krivosheyev / Josef Pazderka -- Disgrace. On the perception of the invasion of Czechoslovakia in literary and humanistic circles. Development and psychopathology of the relationships / Tomás Glanc -- That's when our illusions were dispelled once and for all: an interview with Lyudmila Alexeyeva, a Soviet dissident / Josef Pazderka -- A few minutes of freedom: an interview with Natalya Gorbanevskaya, a Soviett dissident / Josef Pazderka -- Diary of Elvira Filipovich (1967-71) / Elvira Filipovich.