Singing Revolution

From 1987 to 1991 Baltic mass singing protests built peaceful independence movements that broke the Soviet grip on Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Overview

Song festivals, banned songs, and heritage movements became lawful vehicles of national revival under the cover of culture. The Baltic Way of 23 August 1989, a human chain of roughly two million people across all three republics on the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, electrified world opinion. Popular fronts won electoral majorities in 1990 and declared the transition to independence, which Moscow answered with blockade and the January 1991 killings in Vilnius and Riga. The failure of the August 1991 coup ended Soviet control for good. The three states insisted on legal continuity with their 1918 to 1940 republics, and their nonviolent discipline made the Singing Revolution an icon of peaceful liberation.