WRT assumptions we carry around with us:<p><i>The Soviet Union seemed to have adjusted to undertaking bloody &quot;pacifications&quot; in Eastern Europe every 12 years - Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980</i><p>One should really compare the bloodliness of those pacifications with similar ones undertaken against Iraq or Libya. The difference would be dramatic.<p>Not that I am defending soviet regime. Adding insult to injury, they routinely failed their PR campaigns.