Estonian Singing Revolution

Last week I came across a piece of recent history that I had somehow missed. Watching the History of the Eurovision Contest, which I might add turned out to be surprisingly interesting, I heard for the first time about the Singing Revolution of Estonia.

Estonia is one of the three small Balkan states, along with Latvia and Lithuania that were forcibly subsumed into the Soviet empire following World War II. Estonia has long had a strong tradition of folk singing, with a choral festival running since 1869, so when Gorbachev ushered in the era of ‘Perestroika’ and the sniff of leniency was in the air, the people of Estonia took to the streets, not to protest, march or burn flags but to sing.

“We sang all night and everybody went home early in the morning. It was emotionally so strong that the next day there were even more people. The day after, there were even more people. People took out their hidden flags. They had these flags hidden for 50 years and now they took these out and started to wave them.”
Artur Talvik, participant.

Throughout the summer of 1987 over 10,000 people gathered each evening in the Festival grounds of the capital Tallinn to sing. By September 1988 they were able to organise a gathering of 300,000 people to form a massive choir sending a message reverberating all the way back to Moscow. This Youtube promo for a documentary on the revolution catches the energy of the period. 

In another act of peaceful protest over 1.5 million people joined hands to form the ‘Balkan Chain’ along the 600 km route linking up the three capitals of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. At one point Russian tanks rolled into the country but the order to fire never came so the people kept singing. In 1991 the Estonian Parliament declared independence without a shot being fired.

I was just blown away by the courage and commitment of ordinary people to have a voice, literally. And what wonderful evidence of the power in choosing to raise the vibration above confrontation and align with the positive energy of the universe.