[1] President of Czechoslovakia and Communist Party leader Antonín Novotný and his fellow conservatives had begun taking a more repressive approach toward intellectuals and writers after the Six-Day War[2] of June 1967.

[3] Vaculík made an inflammatory speech in which he rejected the leading role of the party as unnecessary and criticized it for its restrictive cultural policies and failure to address social issues.

[7] In hopes of influencing voters in upcoming party congress elections, Vaculík released the manifesto "Two Thousand Words to Workers, Farmers, Scientists, Artists, and Everyone" in several major Prague newspapers, complete with signatures of other public figures.

[8] He also expressed concern over the "recent apprehension" regarding the reforms due to "the possibility that foreign forces"—those of the Warsaw Treaty Organization—"may intervene in Czechoslovakia's internal development.

[9]Despite the overall moderate tone and Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy,[10] the "Two Thousand Words" called for action on the part of the public in case of military intervention and therefore denied the leading role of the party, as Vaculík's 1967 speech had.

Following the "Two Thousand Words," Leonid Brezhnev's party leadership, seeing a situation similar to that in 1956 Hungary developing,[11] used the term "counterrevolution" to describe the Prague Spring for the first time.

[17] On 6 January 1977, Vaculík, along with Havel and Pavel Landovský, an actor, attempted to take a copy of the charter to the post office to mail to the Czechoslovak government.