Estonia: After the Song Ends

[excerpted from, Europe North & West: Stories across Cultures ?2023]

The Singing Revolution.

The people stood one by one in the stadium and began to sing, the authorities dumbfounded and uncertain of response – because of the scale. This singing of songs both folk and patriotic, including their former national anthem, continued on the streets and at music festivals over a period of 4 years in addition to other such acts of protest, before Estonians won their freedom as the Soviet Union crumbled.

The first time I heard this story was in January 2009 from Katrin and Tiina, 2 Estonian women, whom I was hosting in Seoul, Korea. A documentary by the same name had been released in 2006 to a limited audience – though, as I’d been living in Korea for 4 years by the time of their visit, it hadn’t crossed my horizon.

Who revolts through song?? –but then I thought: this is what the 1960s counterculture movement in the US was largely about, following on the heels of the Beatles, and Woodstock with its folk music association. And I thought of a friend in Spain who’d told me just the year prior, in 2007, how much the US movement for social change in the late 1960s and early 1970s had brought great encouragement to her and her fellow student revolutionaries in their fight against the Franco regime.

I visited Tallinn in May 2011, as a day trip from nearby Helsinki where I was attending a conference; a longer return visit to Estonia would come 7 years later. Indeed, the connection between Estonia and Finland must be mentioned, for this country is more closely aligned with the latter than either of its Baltic sisters. The languages are similar, and in many ways, cultures of the 2 countries align as well.

In 2022, a musical based on the Singing Revolution of Estonia was produced in the US, so by now this story is perhaps more well known. But at the time that I was told, the story both shocked and thrilled me; having spent much of my adult life in peace activism, I was only too delighted to learn that one country gained its independence by the random singing of songs forbidden by their overlord – forbidden precisely because, folk song or patriotic, they were certain to stir feelings of national identity.

In 1987 at a large music festival, the sort for which Europe is well known, one musical act began to play their former anthem, highly forbidden – and despite the presence of Soviet military, the people rose to their feet and began to sing. Every night of the festival thereafter, 10,000 people filled the stadium and sang their forbidden songs … and they brought with them their national flags, hidden away for 50 years. Protests and public cries for independence ensued, people sang on street corners, and at the same festival the following year, the first public speeches for independence were given to an audience of 300,000. Another year, and in August 1989 and one of the world’s most extraordinary protests, 2 million people from all 3 Baltic states joined hands and created a 675km human chain among their 3 capital cities, in what would later be known as The Baltic Way. Song, and joining hands, for freedom.

By 1990 the USSR was swiftly crumbling, and by 1991, Estonia was free.

Would they have gained their freedom anyway? The Soviet Union, after all, could no longer sustain itself. Even so – what a gracious, and moving, way to call for peace and freedom.

A primary objective during my September 2018 visit was the Museum of Occupations and Freedom – Soviet, Nazi, and Soviet again, like much of Eastern Europe. I’d met with BPW colleagues for a luncheon, and this is the story they wanted to share with me – and, naturally, precisely what I wanted to see.

The legacy of the Soviet era lingers. Human rights in Estonia are generally high, while issues such as excessive police force and conditions of detention remain, resulting in a classification as a ‘flawed democracy’. In January 2021, the government collapsed as the prime minister announced his resignation on accusations of corruption, in particular misuse of pandemic relief funds. Corruption in government, while lower than many other post-communist countries, is still considered deeply ingrained at both local and national levels. As well, and not dissimilar to many a European nation of late, far-right, populist, and Euroskeptic political forces are on the rise. Discrimination against the Roma, those of Russian ethnicity, and sexual minorities represents an ongoing concern.

Today, Estonia still sings – of late especially so, since the February 2022 invasion of neighboring Ukraine by Russia and its perpetual war, to quell the fear that this action has brought to many a former Soviet country. This summer music festival season in Tallinn saw one of the world’s largest choral events, the Laulupidu youth song and dance festival with 23,000 young participants.

An idiom has emerged from this festival: üheshingamine, or “breathing as one.” It is without a doubt this solidarity that has served as Estonia’s strength – and in this era of growing concern about Russian aggression, political divisiveness, and ongoing areas of discrimination, could well serve them once more.

Europe North & West: Stories across Cultures, by Anne Hilty, ?2023