becoming more common; soon, non-party publications began appearing, such as the trade union daily Práce (Labour). This was also helped by the Journalists' Union, which by March 1968 had already persuaded the Central Publication Board, the government censor, to allow editors to receive uncensored subscriptions to foreign papers, allowing for a more international dialogue around the news. The press, the radio, and the television also contributed to these discussions by hosting meetings where students and young workers could ask questions of writers such as Goldstücker, Pavel Kohout, and Jan Procházka and political victims such as Josef Smrkovský, Zdeněk Hejzlar, and Gustáv Husák. Television also broadcast meetings between former political prisoners and the communist leaders from the secret police or prisons where they were held. Most importantly, this new self-called freedom and the introduction of television into the lives of everyday Czechoslovak citizens moved the political dialogue from the intellectual to the popular sphere. Soviet reaction Initial reaction within the Communist Bloc was mixed. Hungary's János Kádár was highly supportive of Dubček's appointment in January, but Leonid Brezhnev and the hardliners grew concerned about the reforms, which they feared might weaken the position of the Bloc in the Cold War. At a meeting in Dresden, East Germany on 23 March, the leaders of the "Warsaw Five" (USSR, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and East Germany) questioned the Czechoslovak delegation over the planned reforms, suggesting any talk of "democratization" was a veiled criticism of the Soviet model. The Polish Party leader Władysław Gomułka and János Kádár were less concerned with the reforms themselves than with the growing criticisms levelled by the Czechoslovak media, and worried that the situation might be "similar to...the "Hungarian counterrevolution". Some of the language in the Action Programme may have been chosen to assert that no "counterrevolution" was planned, but Kieran Williams suggests that Dubček was perhaps surprised at, but not resentful of, Soviet suggestions. In May, the KGB initiated Operation Progress, which involved Soviet agents infiltrating Czechoslovak pro-democratic organizations, such as the Socialist and Christian Democrat parties. The Soviet leadership tried to stop, or at least limit, the changes in the ČSSR through a series of negotiations. The Soviet Union agreed to bilateral talks with Czechoslovakia in July at Čierna nad Tisou, near the Soviet border. At the meeting, from 29 July to 1 August, with attendance of Brezhnev, Alexei Kosygin, Nikolai Podgorny, Mikhail Suslov and others on the