Singing Revolution

Between 1987 and 1991, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians won back the independence they had lost when the Soviet Union annexed their countries in 1940, and they did so largely through mass gatherings, petitions and song rather than armed struggle. The name Singing Revolution comes from the huge open-air singing protests of 1988. The movement became one of the best-known examples of nonviolent resistance in the late Cold War and part of the wider collapse of Soviet power in eastern Europe.

After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, Soviet forces occupied the three Baltic states and turned them into Soviet republics, a step many Western governments never formally recognised. German occupation followed in 1941, and the Red Army returned in 1944–45. Armed resistance by the Forest Brothers was largely crushed by the early 1950s. Decades of deportations, restrictions on religion, the promotion of Russian and heavy immigration from other parts of the Union left many Balts fearing for the survival of their languages and cultures.

The reforms launched by Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985, glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring), loosened controls on speech and allowed long-suppressed subjects to be discussed in public. The first mass campaigns were often environmental: in Estonia a plan to mine phosphorite, revealed in February 1987, provoked what became known as the Phosphorite War, while in Latvia opposition to a new dam on the Daugava and a Riga metro led to the founding of the Environmental Protection Club in February 1987. On 23 August 1987 Estonian activists held a rally in Tallinn demanding that the pact's secret protocol be disclosed and condemned.

Singing had long been part of Baltic national identity through the great song festivals. In June 1988, after a festival in Tallinn's Old Town, crowds moved to the Song Festival Grounds and sang patriotic songs together late into the evening; the artist Heinz Valk coined the phrase Singing Revolution in an article shortly afterwards. On 11 September a mass Song of Estonia gathering took place at the same grounds. Choirs, rock concerts and church events across the region mixed folk, religious and national songs, which helped people overcome fear while keeping protests peaceful.

In 1988 broad movements emerged in each republic: the Popular Front in Estonia, the Latvian People's Front, which claimed some 200,000 members, and Sąjūdis in Lithuania, founded on 3 June. Alongside them stood more radical groups demanding full independence. Pre-war flags and anthems returned, and the three republics declared sovereignty within the Union, Estonia first in November 1988, Lithuania in May 1989 and Latvia in July 1989. On 23 August 1989 the movements joined forces for the Baltic Way, a human chain across all three countries.

After free elections in early 1990, Lithuania declared independence on 11 March 1990, and Latvia and Estonia declared a transition towards it that spring. Moscow answered with economic pressure and then force. On 13 January 1991 Soviet troops and tanks attacked unarmed crowds defending the television tower and parliament in Vilnius, killing fourteen people. In Riga, residents built barricades that same month to protect key buildings.

The failure of the August 1991 coup attempt by Communist hardliners in Moscow decided the matter. Estonia declared full independence on 20 August and Latvia on 21 August, and Iceland became the first state to recognise the restored Estonian republic the following day. The Soviet Union itself recognised the three states on 6 September 1991, months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The last Russian troops left by 1994, and all three countries joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.

Our 1985 map shows Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as Soviet republics; the 1994 map shows them independent again.