People in Central-Eastern Europe tried numerous times to escape the clutches of the Soviet Union.
I didn't feel any Soviet clutches. Those belonged to their Polish collaborators.
Regardless of who operated the clutches, Western "democracies" were deliriously happy that we were in them.
If the Soviets and their collaborators let the world know that on Day X those clutches will be released, Western "democracies" would beg them not to do it or would start building the tallest and the meanest wall ever a year earlier.
Nobody in the West wants 100 million Eastern Europeans. They put up with you now only because the numbers are still low and tolerable.
Berlin Uprising 1954, Hungary and Poland 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968,
The USSR was a lot kinder there than the US was in K, V, I, and A. In their defense, these events were within the USSR's buffer zone. Some sh*ithole that is 10,000 miles away is not a buffer zone. It's a sh*it hole that is 10,000 miles away.