The Vaclav Havel Library is a non-governmental institution located in Prague, Czech Republic. Its basic goal is to serve as an archive of documents chronicling the complex battle for democracy and freedom in the second half of the twentieth century through the works of Vaclav Havel. At the same time, the Vaclav Havel Library strives to initiate and stimulate research, discussion, and meetings devoted to the study of contemporary problems encountered during the transformation of a post-communist state into a socially, economically, and culturally developed civic society.

The first publication of the Vaclav Havel Library is symbolically the collection of cables from the U.S. Embassy in Prague to the State Department in Washington, D.C., dating from November and December 1989. Seeing the "Velvet Revolution" through the eyes of outsiders is refreshing for Czechs; we hope that reading the transcripts from those dramatic days can also be enlightening for foreigners.