Up to Two Million People Join Hands Across the Baltic States

On 23 August 1989, a human chain stretched some 600 to 675 kilometres across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Organised by the pro-independence popular fronts, Rahvarinne in Estonia, Tautas fronte in Latvia, and Sajudis in Lithuania, the peaceful demonstration took place on the fiftieth anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. At 19:00 local time, participants joined hands, linking the three capital cities of Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius in a public repudiation of the Soviet occupation that had followed the 1939 secret accords.

The demonstration built directly upon the legacy of Western Black Ribbon Day protests initiated earlier in the 1980s. When Soviet authorities admitted under reform policies that the secret protocols dividing Eastern Europe between Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler had indeed existed, popular demand for legal restitution intensified. Baltic leaders maintained that their nations had been forcefully annexed in 1940 rather than voluntarily absorbed. Establishing that Soviet governance was rooted in an illegal pact allowed these activists to argue that Soviet jurisdiction had been completely null and void from the outset, obviating the need to adhere to formal Soviet constitutional mechanisms for secession.