He’s seriously NOT some kind of hero. But he did forgo the normal move of a serious crackdown with the Poles, Czechs, and Germans as they started movements.
A few decades before a Soviet leader would have gone Tiennamen Square on them.
Faint praise, but I’ll give him credit for passing on a bloody crack down.
That is what I was expecting. I watched the trickle of migrants become a river. I thought it was through Czechoslovakia that it started.
Wasn't it due to opposition to Soviet communism that the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 took place? I was expecting tanks and machine guns. I believe that it was Gorbachev's call to make and that he decided it was time to let it go.
It took no time at all for people behind the Iron Curtain to realize that their jailers were gone. Perhaps I will live long enough to see something similar in North Korea.
https://www.onwar.com/data/ussrlatvia1991.html
Force was tried in Latvia. Had it succeeded you can bet that it would have been used again.