One reason Solidarity was crushed is a lesson the Hong Kong demonstrators already learned in 2014: if you have leaders, they can be arrested and your movement will lose steam. The 2019 protests have so far succeeded with a remarkable "twitch plays protest" approach to organizing
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Another reason Solidarity went down is that the Soviets could not risk letting the example stand—they had many other satellites to keep subjugated. A key question of these protests is, does Beijing see Hong Kong as sui generis, or as one of 20 Chinese cities waiting to revolt?
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Another key question is to what extent economic grievances (like disparities in wealth and the crippling housing shortage) provide a broad social base to what's happening in Hong Kong. They were the motor for Solidarity, and the reason it came back to life in the late 80's
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Solidarity was a democracy movement, but the reason people wanted democracy was not abstract high principle, but because the government failed to provide a decent standard of living. You had to wait 10 years for a telephone, etc., and there was no way to give voice to grievances
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Rather than Poland, I would urge HK friends to take the example of Finland. It adopted a policy of careful neutrality and not offending its giant neighbor during the cold war. But it had showed its claws, hurting the Red Army so badly in WWII that the Soviets never tried again.
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i think the point is that they 'ultimately won' but they had to pay a heavy price first of course
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