Michael Malice

So even though he was a very committed communist,

he also was very and increasingly skeptical of authoritarianism.

And, you know, in Poland, for example, you had the Solidarity Movement, and this was a labor union movement, and the government didn't know what to do.

They were getting a lot of support from the peoples.

They had strikes that, and the Gdansk Shipyard was when one of them started.

And basically Moscow told them, either you crack down or we're cracking down on you.

And they're like, all right.

And they declared martial law and the rest of the leaders put them away.

But then when Gorbachev was in charge, there wasn't a gun to their back.

And it was the communist leaders themselves who were like, you know what?

There was this really funny moment where Lech Walesa is meeting with Margaret Thatcher and he's telling her what solidarity the movement wants.

And she had been meeting with the Polish government as well.

And she's like, look, like,

tell them like what, because they had, you tried, they wanted, the government wanted her to tell them that we want to negotiate and work things out.

She goes, all right, tell the government what it is that you're asking for.

And he just points to the ceiling.

She goes, he's like, oh yeah, our meetings are bugged anyway.

But they then had the freedom

because they knew that Gorbachev wasn't forcing them to drive solidarity underground.

So they had the idea of like, let's work together with these people.