Twenty-five years ago tomorrow the world changed course. On June 4 1989 semi-free elections in Poland kick-started the end of communism across the whole Soviet bloc – and the Tiananmen Square massacre launched China on an entirely different trajectory. The consequences are still being played out, from Ukraine to the South China Sea.
I will never forget coming back to a newspaper office in Warsaw that afternoon, with elated Polish friends, and noticing on a television screen the first grainy footage of the bodies of Chinese protesters being carried on makeshift stretchers down the streets of Beijing.
From that day forward the ghost of Tiananmen stalked eastern Europe. “Remember Tiananmen!” people whispered, from East Berlin to Sofia. “If we go too far, that might happen here.” In this sense, China’s tragedy was Europe’s boon. The negative example of Tiananmen helped Europeans cleave to the path of non-violence, negotiation and compromise.