This publication, launched in Spring 2011, is the third volume of a book series on the democratic transition of CEE, published within the framework of the project Oral History. In this book, editor András Heltai collected and arranged 25 interviews with prominent Hungarian and non-Hungarian personalities of the transition, presenting their personal experiences and memories of the era, and thus introducing the reader to the international environment of the transition and Hungary’s outstanding foreign policy between 1987 and 1992. Among the interviewees of the volume there are a number of leading political figures of the time, from countries including the (then) United States, East and West Germany, Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Romania.

The individuals whose testimonies are included in this volume are citizens of different countries, and they all have different life paths, positions, and societal roles. There is one thing that ties them together and makes their testimonies important and interesting: whether as participants or leaders, they were characters or witnesses in the dramatic changes which took place in the late 1980s. Among these individuals are former state and regime heads, high-ranking diplomats, “grey eminence” government officials, civil rights activists, scholars, and publicists. Some of them, such as the elder President Bush, Horst Teltschik, Chancellor Kohl’s “right-hand”, or Franz Vranitzky, the Austrian Chancellor, served as decision-makers during those historic times and now twenty years later take a look back at the past. Others, such as the former Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serb, Romanian, and German civil rights activists recount their struggles and relationship with their Hungarian counterparts. The thoughts of our Central-European neighbors provide a good lesson regarding Hungary’s past, as well as the role Hungarian minority communities played in their respective countries during those decisive days—and what we can learn today from those experiences. It is worth observing the experiences of noted Hungarian-born Western European publicists as well as those of leading Hungarian diplomats.

Different people see the past, which some of us lived through, in many different ways. As a result, they argue with one another, as will the readers. It is only then that this exceptional volume would have achieved its goal: it would help in illuminating and achieving, if not consensus, then at the very least mutual understanding.