Pan-European Picnic
In August 1989, the Pan-European Picnic, which Otto von Habsburg planned as a test of Gorbachev, resulted in a large mass exodus of East German refugees. According to the Sinatra doctrine, the Soviet Union did not interfere and the media-informed Eastern European population realized that on the one hand their rulers were increasingly losing power and on the other hand the Iron Curtain was falling apart as a bracket for the Eastern Bloc.