Singing Revolution
The Soviet Occupation Museum in Riga highlights some historical facts, the first of the alliance between Hitler and Stalin which resulted, after von Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, the end of the independence of the Baltic States, occupied by the Red Army in 1940. The Soviets and the Nazis, who will take their place in 1941, had similar plans: to exploit and colonize the three countries, or Russified Germanization. The Germans, however, were smarter and win the hearts of the people by restoring the small real estate and riding the hatred of Jews Bolsheviks. It also stresses that the attitude of the Allies after 1945, the three republics abandoned to their fate, and Sweden, which many repatriated escapees surrender to the Soviets. The postwar period was marked from deportation to the gulag of the opponents of the regime and the museum displays a significant object: a metal bin that the deportees were forced to use as a toilet, with the edge roughly cut to make it inconvenient and dangerous to use them.
Riga know my age who was a hero of the independence achieved by Latvia in 1991. We meet in the offices of the Popular Front, a grouping of political forces that led the country to independence from the Soviet Union, and tells me the support of the Latvian community of immigrants in the U.S., Britain, Sweden and Australia, the return of some of them in the decisive period, non-recognition of the incorporation of Latvia into the USSR by a score of countries (among which did not include Italy), which served as a valuable legal reference for the independence movement.
Not only could the Popular Front, as the Italian CLN, to unite disparate political forces, but he managed to coordinate its actions in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and maintain until the end of a non- -violently. In the late eighties, for example, the main meetings of supporters of independence of Estonia took place during the national festival of song, to which attended by thousands of people chanting pro-independence reasons. On August 23, 1989, in occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, was organized a human chain that united the three capitals, with an area of \u200b\u200bsix hundred kilometers and the participation of two million people. In Estonia the process that led to separation from the USSR in 1991 occurred within the institutions, namely the Government, the Supreme Soviet of Estonia and the Communist Party of Estonia, and was on the PFLP, who knew how to build a coalition across the population of Estonia which constituted the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Estonian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The Civic Museum of Tallinn reconstructed through original movies, the steps that led to independence: the introduction of Estonian as the official language, the changing of the flag and currency. Honestly, are also shown the protests of the Russian minority who did not want separation from the USSR. I used a kind of museum confirms the key role that Gorbachev had in initiating the chain of events that led to the independence of the Baltic Republics. Already Jarrek, Poland, stressed this, while, in a newspaper stand, stared stunned the disclosure of a series of DVDs celebrating Pope John Paul II as the sole maker of the disintegration the Soviet empire. The museum also displays pictures of the barricades erected in January 1991, when it was feared a Soviet military crackdown, the declaration of independence on August 20 and the column of tanks that had been underway to prevent this, then called by Yeltsin.
In Latvia, not all deal with the Soviet past were closed. In the news these days political report a case of the President of the Foreign Affairs Committee of Parliament, Aleksandrs Kiršteins, who was forced to resign and expelled from his party for having declared that the Jewish community should no longer behave as in 1940, when "greeted" with Soviet tanks. Kiršteins is also known for his controversial stances on Russia and the Russian minority in Latvia. The same route of the border with Russia, moreover, is not yet defined, although now it is the eastern border of the European Union. The area of \u200b\u200bcontention is the region abren, now inhabited mostly by Russians. Before the Second World War belonged to Latvia, but during the Soviet occupation of the border was moved and the area handed over to Russia. The Latvian government, which supports the validity of the peace accords of 1920, and Vladimir Putin, who has called that statement a "foolish" have not yet agreed.
Today the Russians make up about one quarter of the population. Those of them who were born before August 21, 1991 must take an examination to obtain Latvian citizenship, unless they have not already before 17 June 1940, the date of the Soviet invasion. Examination must demonstrate mastery of the language, knowledge of Latvian history, the Constitution and the national anthem. Who does not support or do not pass the exam remains a "non-citizen permanent resident in the country" and, therefore, has no passport and no right to vote. If you think the policy of Russification imposed by the Soviet Union to the countries Baltic, the tradeoff is clear. Many Russians have decided to try the exam, especially attracted by the prospect of work and movement in other European Union countries. Dima and Zurab, two young men in their thirties, I tell a political motivation: the former wants to vote to influence the choices of the country, the second said he felt the need to belong to a state. Others refuse to take the test, perhaps because of pride. The impression you get in shops and restaurants, however, is that the Russians carry out the work will end up less profitable.
Every autumn, a little old man with gray hair show Ülemiste lake near Tallinn, and in the night, reaching the gates of the city. Calls to the guards: "It's over the construction of the city?" The guards have to say no, that there are still many years, so the old man returns to the lake, or if you accidentally say yes, he would plunge down to the lake the hills to the city, destroying it and drown the inhabitants.
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