Estonia: Almost extinguished, successfully reborn
The following text is the shortest possible review to help inform friends and guests from abroad about Estonia’s experience with foreign occupation and totalitarianism as well as its road to peacefully re-establishing national inde-pendence on the basis of democracy. Tunne Kelam Member of the European Parliament
The following text is the shortest possible review to help inform friends and guests from abroad about Estonia’s experience with foreign occupation and totalitarianism as well as its road to peacefully re-establishing national inde-pendence on the basis of democracy.
Tunne Kelam
Member of the European Parliament
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A Brief Political Chronology<br />
ESTONIA:<br />
REPUBLIC<br />
OF ESTONIA<br />
100<br />
• 25 March 1949 – Second mass deportation sends<br />
20,000 more <strong>Estonia</strong>ns to Siberia.<br />
• 5 March 1953 – Stalin dies. A few years later<br />
surviving <strong>Estonia</strong>ns gradually return home from<br />
Siberia.<br />
• 26 July 1978 – Johannes Käbin, long-standing leader<br />
of <strong>Estonia</strong>n Communist Party replaced by Kremlin<br />
zealot Karl Vaino who starts Russification campaign.<br />
• 23 August 1987 – First mass political demonstration<br />
in Tallinn asks for truth about secret protocols of<br />
1939 Soviet-Nazi Pact.<br />
• May-July 1988 – Spontaneous Singing Revolution<br />
under long-forbidden national colours generates new<br />
hope for national revival.<br />
• 20 August 1988 – <strong>Estonia</strong>n National Independence<br />
Party founded as first non-Soviet democratic political<br />
party on territory of Soviet Union.<br />
77
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