The curious conversion of the late Gyula Horn.

It's worth following the link to see the photo of the late Gyula Horn with wirecutters. It reminds me of a quote by Bruce Catton:

“In the 1860s the leaders of the cotton belt made one of the most prodigious miscalculations in recorded history. On the eve of the era of applied technologies, in which more and more work is done with fewer people and less effort, they made war to preserve the day of chattel slavery - the era of gang labor, with its reliance on the same use of human muscles that built the pyramids. The lost cause was lost before it started to fight. Inability to see what is going on in the world can be costly.”

By the summer of 1989, Horn had seen what was going on in the world ... and he (and Hungary) became nimble.

Gyula Horn, Who Helped Part Iron Curtain, Dies at 80, by Douglas Martin (NYT)

Gyula Horn, a former leader of Hungary who in 1989 literally ripped a hole in the Iron Curtain, helping to set off months of tumultuous change in which Communist governments in Eastern Europe fell one after the other, died Wednesday in Budapest. He was 80.