June 4 marks the fifteenth anniversary of both the Beijing Massacre and Solidarity’s first electoral victory. These anniversaries inspire the following three reflections, which speak to the dreams and dilemmas of not just the 1900s but also this troubled new century.

1. Determined people who rely on words, symbols and strikes, rather than violence, can sometimes accomplish impressive – indeed occasionally even miraculous – things.

Here, it is obviously Poland’s 1989, not China’s, that immediately comes to mind. And the point relates as well to the non-violent struggles that brought change so quickly – and unexpectedly – to other parts of the former Soviet bloc in that year of miracles. Yet, even in the case of Tiananmen, it is worth remembering just how magical and surprising some Chinese events seemed in 1989. Though many experts thought it likely that protests would take place in China that year, none expected the movement, which brought first students and then urbanites of all classes to the streets, to last as long and grow as big as it did.

2. Though social movements deserve to be treated as the collective creations, sometimes the actions of a few influential individuals can have an enormous impact.

This may seem obvious, since the stories of political events as filtered through mass media focus on famous individuals, but scholars often pay more attention to patterns, groups and models. What both Poland and China’s 1989s made clear was how much specific actors matter. It is worth keeping in mind how differently things might have gone fifteen years ago, had a small number of people not made particular choices.

In Beijing, for example, the protests could easily have fizzled out in early May, had student leaders not hit upon the creative idea of staging a group hunger strike. This act galvanized the movement by juxtaposing powerfully the image of self-sacrificing youths at Tiananmen Square, on the one side, and corrupt old men hiding away in the Zhongnanhai complex, on the other.

The hunger strike inspired massive demonstrations of support in scores of mainland cities and also Hong Kong, then still a British Crown Colony.

In Poland, meanwhile, it made an enormous difference that there were far-sighted and charismatic leaders within the opposition movement, such as Adam Michnik, to articulate a vision of change that stressed the virtues of compromise. Similarly, it was important as well that there were some members of the ruling elite willing to sit down at the same table with these dissidents to discuss Poland’s future – and a leader in charge in Moscow who did not dispatch troops to Warsaw.

3. Sometimes struggles that initially appear to have “failed” later come to seem “successes,” since they help pave the way for later efforts to reach similar goals.

The Solidarity strikes of the early 1980s are a classic example of a “failure” being transformed by time into a “success.” By the mid-1980s, with the country experiencing difficulties and no sign on the horizon that things would soon change for the better, Solidarity was widely considered a failure – perhaps a noble failure, but a failure nevertheless. The events of 1989 invalidated this assessment, since it became clear that the earlier struggle – and perhaps also protests of the 1970s – played a crucial part in laying the groundwork for the fall of Communism. The strikes of the early 1980s gave opposition leaders a rich store of experience upon which to draw and taught them important lessons about the value of pulling back at times rather than continually escalating their demands. Those early strikes also established networks that could be and were reactivated when the struggle was resumed.

A “failed” movement can also come to be seen as at least partially “successful” if it provides inspiration for people in other places with comparable goals – and this could be said of Tiananmen. Some participants in the European upheavals of 1989, for example, described as deeply inspiring Chinese events of that year, including the famous June 5th standoff between the lone man and the row of tanks.

In addition, taking a longer view, we can say that the mainland events of 1989 helped make possible the movement that took place in Hong Kong just last year, in which residents of that supposedly apathetic city staged massive demonstrations that succeeded in halting imposition of new regulations against “sedition” proposed by Beijing. The 1989 Hong Kong rallies held to show support for the Tiananmen hunger strikers, as well as annual local commemorations of the June 4th Massacre’s anniversary, are largely credited with giving the city’s residents the experience and skills necessary for their 2003 struggle to achieve what it did.

It is worth ending by asking whether or not the Chinese and Polish experiences in 1989 have lessons to offer non-violent protesters of today, as they struggle to overcome great odds and bring about change. What, for example, do our comments above mean for the residents of Hong Kong, who are expected to take to the streets en masse again this June 4th, both to honor the memory of the victims of the Beijing Massacre and to continue their fight to control the fate of their city?

We think that looking backward can indeed help those struggling to create a better future. Hong Kong’s protesters, for instance, can draw strength from the anger and sadness they feel when thinking about the Beijing bloodshed of fifteen years ago. And they should also be heartened by the knowledge that, as the Polish events of that same June 4 demonstrated, it is important in some cases to believe that the impossible can happen – since sometimes it does.