This essay discusses five recently published volumes dealing with the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia. These volumes mark the first extensive involvement by Russian scholars and archivists in historical assessments of the Soviet-Czechoslovak crisis. Reams of declassified documents and analytical essays in four of the volumes illuminate the events of 1968 and add details and nuances, but they do not alter the basic interpretations developed by Western scholars in earlier decades. The fifth volume, put out by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), says more about the mentality of the Putin-era MVD than about the events of 1968.

Three recently published books on the dramatic events of 1968 in Europe, North America, and elsewhere provide a useful opportunity to look back at that year and ask what caused such passions. Violent protesters in the democratic West claimed to be acting on behalf of a wider cause, but most of them paid little heed to those in Czechoslovakia and Poland who were seeking to ease the oppressiveness of Communist rule. Newly available archival sources and the passage of more than four decades facilitate a reexamination of that momentous year, but many aspects of the events remain nearly as inscrutable today as they were at the time.