THE BALTIC CHAIN (Estonia, 1989)

Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty that also arranged for the annexation of Poland, Finland and the Baltic states. As a result of this, in 1944 the Soviet Union definitively added Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to its territory. On August 23, 1989, precisely fifty years after the signing of the ‘Devils’ Pact’, residents of the three Baltic states formed a human chain six hundred kilometres long to commemorate the pact and protest against Soviet domination. This event has gone down in history as the Baltic Way, and formed the overture to the proclamation of independence in Lithuania. A year later Estonia and Latvia followed.