First, every mistake by the police -- the heavy-handed use of violence, threats, blackmail, etc. -- must be made public, says former Slovak dissident Miroslav Kusy, citing an essay he wrote called "Advice From a Dissident."

I was 25 years old when I made the decision to sign Charter 77, recalls Anna Sabatova. I didn't realize that I was taking part in a historical event. I simply signed, not for the first time, a document calling for the observance of human rights and freedoms.

In 1989, when freedom finally prevailed in Czechoslovakia, Belarus was just entering on its own long march toward that same goal, writes Pavel Sevyarynets of the Youth Front movement in Belarus. Our 1991, 1996, and 2006 were more similar to Prague in 1968 than to the Prague of 1989.

Russia today has problems with freedom, democracy, and human rights. And people today also come out onto public squares, protest, and criticize the authorities. But even the most radical Russian oppositionist today can hardly imagine what it meant to be a dissident in the Soviet Union.

In a bid to show the world not only the military advantages of the communist system, but the humanitarian ones as well, the Soviet state poured enormous resources into education, science, and the arts. But the people could not be made into slaves, writes Aleksandr Gnezdilov, an activist with the youth wing of the Moscow branch of Yabloko.

Approval for the Czech invasion inside the Soviet Union was not nearly as unanimous as Soviet mass media made it seem, Russian human rights activist Ludmila Alekseyeva recalls.

Uzbek opposition leader Muhammad Solih, who served as a Soviet soldier in Bratislava in 1968, reflects on how his experiences there set him on a lifelong path of nonviolent dissent.