"Benevolent" more in the sense of "currently unable to order the next massacre". The German unification only went ahead because soviet troops didn't intervene l

"Benevolent" more in the sense of "currently unable to order the next massacre". The German unification only went ahead because soviet troops didn't intervene like they did in many prior instances: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_German_uprising_of_1953 > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Spring > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Georgian_demonstrations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1956_Georgian_demonstrations Glasnost and Perestroika under Gorbachev were not benevolence but necessary because the centralized power of the Soviet Union was dwindling. The SU became more and more occupied with fixing its own problems and could no longer hold together the Eastern Bloc by influence or force. Which is why the Eastern Bloc then slowly dissolved. This didn't start with the German unification, but earlier, and encompassed Poland, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989 The SU (who are actually dominated by, but different from "the Russians") certainly would have liked to hold it together. And while under Yeltsin, there was a period of acceptance of the dissolution of the SU, currently Putin seems to want to revive it, at least in terms of territory.