Tallinn: Old Town in Depth - Part 21

OUTER TALLINN

Song Festival Grounds (Lauluväljak)

At this open-air theatre, built in 1959 and resembling 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. During the festival, the singers rehearse from Monday through Thursday, and then, on Friday morning, dress up in their traditional outfits and march out to the Song Festival Grounds from Freedom Square. While it hosts big pop music acts, too, it’s a national monument for the compelling role it played in Estonia’s fight for independence.

Since 1988, when locals sang patriotic songs here in defiance of Soviet rule, these grounds have taken on a symbolic importance to the nation. Locals vividly recall putting on folk costumes knitted by their grandmothers and coming here with masses of Estonians to sing. Overlooking the grounds is a statue of Gustav Ernesaks, who directed the Estonian National Male Choir for 50 years through the darkest times of Soviet rule. He was a power in the drive for independence and lived to see it happen.

Estonia’s Singing Revolution

When you are a modest nation of just a million people lodged between Russia and Germany, simply surviving is a challenge. Estonia was free from 1920 to 1939. The country then had a 50 year Nazi/Soviet nightmare. Estonians say, “We were so few in numbers that we had to emphasize that we exist. 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, which was 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 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.

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 independence. Then, the coup in Moscow failed and suddenly, the USSR was gone, and Estonia was free.

Continued in part 22.