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>"Unfortunately, China probably also learned from the USSR that the entire charade only collapses when you blink and refrain from using the military to crush civilian dissent."

Baloney. USSR did not crush because of "civilian dissent". All the changes were driven from the top.



The Berlin Wall fell because the East German authorities and the USSR declined to shoot civilians.

And the fact that order wasn't given was mostly due to bureaucratic ineptitude and delay, rather than intent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_the_Berlin_Wall#Crow...

It could have easily been Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, Georgia 1989 instead.

Progress trends towards freedom, but it can walk over a lot of corpses on its way there. :(


Berlin Wall did not cause the collapse of the USSR, it was one of the results of generally declining empire and change of it policies that again came from the top. Gorby and Reagan had decided to be "friends"




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