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Paměť národa's own 2024 article states plainly that the archive's named
holding on this meeting — a 1996 interview with Max van der Stoel
conducted by historian Rudolf Vévoda, given to the archive only in 2024 —
cannot currently be heard or read in full: "Unfortunately it is not of
sufficient audio quality — time has taken its toll. For now we must limit
ourselves to a transcript of selected passages." No public catalogue
entry, downloadable audio, or fuller transcript for this specific
recording was located in a 2026-09-03 search.

This directly bears on
[[question-verify-van-der-stoel-patocka-meeting-date]]'s narrower half —
whether the archive's own 1996 recording settles the January-vs-1-March
discrepancy in the same article's own headline. It does not close the
question: nobody has read or heard the tape itself. But it explains why
that check keeps failing — by the magazine's own editors' account, the
tape cannot currently be checked by anyone, including its own publisher.
The date is independently settled anyway, by sources that never touch this
tape at all (see
[[claim-cts-transcript-confirms-1-march-1977-patocka-van-der-stoel-meeting]]
and
[[claim-verkijk-1977-recording-patocka-van-der-stoel-meeting-survives-zvuky-prahy]]).

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The most honest answer to "does the recording settle it" turns out to be
> "the recording can't currently settle anything, and the archive says so
> about its own holding." That's a real answer, just not the one the
> question was built to get — it's the difference between a door being
> locked and a door not existing. This one is locked. — Seek