Power,Violence and the Politics of Hope: Global 1989 from Czechoslovakia to Hong Kong

One of the striking features of 1989 was the realisation that a revolution can succeed without any radical innovation. The 1989 Revolutions in Central Europe suggest that radical political changes could be achieved by moderate means. They gave rise to a series of non-revolutionary revolutions, spanning the second “Velvet Revolution” in Slovakia (1998), and coloured revolutions in Serbia (2000), Georgia (2003), Ukraine (2004) and Kyrgyzstan (2005). Yet, the script of non-violent revolution has its limitations. Ernst Gellner was right to warn about the “price of velvet” just a few years after 1989. Were the velvet revolutionaries too gentle towards their enemies? The dispiriting lesson of Hong Kong's struggle for democracy three decades later appears to be that, without resorting to violence, change may well be impossible. This too, in a roundabout way, is the result of 1989 going global. Partly in response to the perceived threat of coloured revolutions, China has perfected its repressive regime in ways unimaginable before. The key question that Hong Kong today raises is how to act on the legacy of 1989 against those who are determined to make sure that 1989 never happens again?