Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
We had no weapons. Being together and singing together was our power.” Singing
has long been a national form of expression in this country; the first Estonian Song
Festival occurred in 1869, and has been held every five years since then.
Estonian culture was under siege during the Soviet era. Moscow wouldn't allow
locals to wave their flag or sing patriotic songs. Russians and Ukrainians were moved
in, and Estonians were shipped out in an attempt to dilute the country's identity. But
as cracks began to appear in the USSR, the Estonians mobilized—by singing.
In 1988, 300,000 Estonians—imagine...a third of the population—gathered at the
Song Festival Grounds outside Tallinn to sing patriotic songs. On August 23,
1989—the 50th anniversary of a notorious pact between Hitler and Stalin—the people
of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia held hands to make “the Baltic Chain,” a human
chain that stretched 360 miles from Tallinn to Vilnius in Lithuania. Some feared a Ti-
ananmen Square-type bloodbath, but Estonians kept singing.
In February of 1990, the first free parliamentary elections took place in all three
Baltic states, and pro-independence candidates won majorities. In 1991, hard-line
communists staged a coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and Estonians
feared a violent crackdown. The makeshift Estonian Parliament declared independen-
ce. Then, the coup in Moscow failed. Suddenly, the USSR was gone, and Estonia was
free.
Watch the documentary film
The Singing Revolution
before your visit
(
www.singingrevolution.com
)
to tune into this stirring bit of modern history and to
draw inspiration from Estonia's valiant struggle for freedom.
Later, in the Brezhnev years, Estonian artists managed to slip Surrealist, Pop, and
Photorealist themes into their work (for example, Rein Tammik's large painting
1945-1975
). Estonia was the only part of the USSR that recognized Pop Art. As the Soviets
would eventually learn, change was unstoppable.
The rest of the museum is devoted to temporary exhibits, with contemporary art always
on the
fifth floor
(where there's a nice view back to the Old Town from the far gallery).
It's also worth admiring the mostly successful architecture—the building is partly dug into
the limestone hill, and the facade is limestone, too.
Outer Tallinn
▲
Song Festival Grounds (Lauluväljak)
—At this open-air theater, built in 1959 and re-
sembling an oversized Hollywood Bowl, the Estonian nation gathers to sing. Every five
years, these grounds host a huge national song festival with 25,000 singers and 100,000
spectators. While it hosts big pop-music acts, too, it's a national monument for the com-
pelling role it played in Estonia's fight for independence.
