October 4, 1989
Excerpt of a Politburo Meeting
This document was made possible with support from MacArthur Foundation
[…]
[Anatolii Lukianov reports that Tian’anmen casualties topped three thousand]
M.S. Gorbachev: We must be realists. They, like us, have to hold on. Three thousand… So what? Sometimes one has to retreat. This is what strategy and tactics are for. If one has adopted a general policy, one may have different manoeuvres within its framework.
Gorbachev comments on how communist parties should deal with unrest, such as what took place in Beijing in June 1989.
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