Until 1989, pro-democracy protests in the Warsaw Bloc tended not to end well. East Germany 1953, Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Poland 1981, etc. But the 1989 revolutions were, for the most part, remarkably free of bloodshed. Why was that the case?
Why didn't Jaruzelski declare martial law again in August 1988 in response to the Polish strikes, as he had only eight years prior in an attempt to crush the Solidarity movement?
Why didn't Erick Honecker send the Stasi and NVA to massacre protestors at Leipzig?
Why didn't Red Army tanks roll into Czechoslovakia to stop the Velvet Divorce, or into Hungary to crush the movement started by the Pan-European Picnic?
On a related note to Hungary, why wasn't Imre Pozsgay punished for saying, on January 29, 1989, that the 1956 uprising was a popular uprising, in defiance of state-sanctioned orthodoxy that claimed it was all due to foreign meddling and counterrevolutionaries? I mean, it had been the official view of history held by the MSzMP Politburo for 30 years, I was shocked that he didn't get disappeared forever.