That the massacres happened in side streets, largely military vs. local non-student supporters, doesn't mean that the students weren't threatened with "move now or there's going to be blood", or that those massacres would not be connected to what went down on the square, even if not directly on it. As such your semantic quibbles are meaningless. After the hardliners in the CCP won out when it comes to how to handle the protest the whole party turned away from Deng's reforms for what about ten years or so, hardliners apparently fearing that if they reformed anything, people would want even more reforms, as evidenced by the Tiananmen protests.
The whole thing is just perfect proof how stuffy, crusty, and calcified the CCP is in general, and how out of touch with what people actually want.