The Singing Revolution

The Singing Revolution is a documentary film created by James Tusty and Maureen Castle Tusty about the nonviolent Singing Revolution in Estonia in which hundreds of thousands of Estonians gathered publicly between 1986 and 1991, in an effort to end decades of Soviet occupation. The revolutionary songs they created anchored Estonias nonviolent struggle for freedom.

Caught in the middle between two aggressively expansionist superpowers, Nazi Germany and the USSR, and pledged to the Soviet Union by the secret clauses in the MolotovRibbentrop Pact between the Nazis and the Soviets, Russian forces invaded and annexed the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in 1939, at the beginning of World War II. As was the case in Latvia and Lithuania, by the end of the war more than a quarter of the Estonian population had been deported, executed, or had fled the country. During the turbulent decades that followed, music became a powerful unifying force in the Baltic republics a means of preserving the countrys national identity, as well as a tool for political resistance in the face of cultural genocide.Between 1986 and 1991, while there was violent turmoil and struggle for independence from the Soviet Union in the other Baltic states, Estonians courageously and peacefully demanded that the Soviets recognize their countrys right to statehood and selfgovernance. The revolutionary songs they created anchored Estonias struggle for freedom, which was ultimately accomplished in 1991 without the loss of a single life. The Estonian activist Heinz Valk, who first dubbed Estonias resistance the Singing Revolution, said proudly of his countrymen, Until now, revolutions have been filled with destruction, burning, killing, and hate, but we started our revolution with a smile and a song. Singing fueled the nonviolent revolution that defeated a very violent occupation. ........

Source: Wikipedia