Sarah Paine

Yeah, generational change.

A, the leaders don't have the stomach for it anymore.

I don't know how you'd feel about sending tanks and going, oh, we're going to splatter all these people.

I think for many Americans, that would not be the choice that they would make.

And so this ruthless generation is gone.

Another piece...

is Gorbachev had traveled, and I think he had some Czech friends, and I can't remember all his list of friends, but they'd been horrified by Czechoslovakia in 1968, as young people watching, as Russian young people watching it, and thinking, it's just wrong.

We shouldn't be doing this.

If communism is what it should be, this is not what should be happening.

And so this is of their youth, Gorbachev and his gen... It's not just him.

He reflects a whole generation of communists.

And so they're thinking, there's gotta be another way.

This is just not right.

And so then he thinks he's got his other way.

And so it's this exuberance of the reforms and things are happening in Russia.

There's a tremendous feeling of energy.

And so he's telling the Poles, you get at it too.

We're all going to do this thing.

But it's all the expertise and things that he's missing, that he's unaware that he's missing, as are all these other people.

Because how could they have it?