Saturday Evening Film: “The Inimitable Baltic Way.” When 2 Million People Formed The Longest Human Chain In History, Stretching Between Three Countries, To Reclaim Their Freedom From Soviet Occupation

“Words Themselves Were More Important Than The Way People Said Them.”

The man sitting next to me on my flight from New York to Malaga was Lithuanian, in his 30s. He was cranky about his country, said all they care about is nice furniture, and explained why he prefers to live in Malaga, where they don’t care about furniture.

I said:

”But you should be proud to be Lithuanian.”

“Why?” he asked.

“The Baltic Way!” I said,

He did almost a double take, looked at me with surprise and almost suspicion. “You know about that?” he said.

“Everybody knows about that,” I said.

He smiled, and looked a little proud actually. I had passed the test for an acceptable person to be seated next to on an airplane.

I told him Sweden has the same preoccupation with nice furniture as the Baltics, and we praised Spain for bowing out of the Nice Furniture Europa mania.

But seriously, what Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania did on Aug 23, 1989, on the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, deserves so much more fanfare than we give it, (which is almost none.)

Two and a half months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Soviet occupied Baltic states, with only 11 days notice, using only radios to communicate, organized the longest human chain in human history, to protest their 50 year annexation by the USSR. Over 2 million people from the three countries, drove to designated points, and at a coordinated moment, held hands, in a human chain for freedom that stretched 675.5 km and went from Tallin to Riga to Vilnius. This actually happened!

It was peaceful, there were no injuries, not so much as a scrape. Everybody who was part of it remembers it as the most important achievement, and moments of their lives. Those 15 minutes when they all held hands, for freedom.

I just asked Grok to give me a list of iconic events where human beings defied tyranny, and it listed everything from The Spartacus Slave revolt to Rosa Parks to Tiananmen Square—Ghandi’s Salt March, Nelson Mandela, etc. I asked why it didn’t include The Baltic Way.

(It’s strangely gratifying to scold Grok.)

Grok apologized, and told me that yes, it would make a good addition for future lists of iconic expressions of the human desire for liberty from tyranny. Grok did not mention, for that matter, the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, or the Prague Spring of 1968, or the Velvet Revolution of 1989—so why am I bothering with Grok’s sense of the history of freedom movements?

In any case, I always wanted to post a good documentary about The Baltic Way, because I love it so much—find it so very moving.

I always wondered how they did it. Well, it turns out there is a short documentary about precisely this—how this immense and miraculous, (slighted by mass culture) event actually came together.

And this will be out Saturday evening film. Here it is:

Here’s how ABC covered it. What a period piece! Imagine a US broadcast referring to the esprit of this protest as …”what they see as their loss of independence…”

You can say that again.

Annexed by military threats with no warning by a secret pact that dissolved their national sovereignty and rendered them occupied?

I dare say they did “see” that as “their loss of independence.”

Lithuania was free only 6 months after the event, in 1990, and Estonia and Latvia the following year, 1991.

The often overlooked Baltic freedom movement, propelled by singing—mass singing—was brilliantly depicted in the documentary The Singing Revolution, but try as I might, I can’t find the fill film to present. It’s one of my favorite documentaries.

Here’s the trailer:

I know they beat drums for NATO and the EU at the end of the “The Inimitable Baltic Way,” but…can you blame them? The film came out 5 years ago, before the present NATO/EU horrors.

I love the details about the flowers.

“We flew low, throwing flowers right off the plane.”

If you ever wind up sitting next to an Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian on a flight—be sure to congratulate them. It’s one of the craziest, most bold, unlikely, and beautiful expressions of freedom ever registered in the human story. And to this day, nobody really knows whose idea it was—each country thinks it was their idea.

The Soviets, of course, railed against it, as “nationalist extremism,” and the like. But since the Berlin Wall was still 2.5 months from collapsing, it really was a very bold idea that could easily have backfired.

Most Americans, safe to say, know about the Berlin Wall, but don’t know about her older sister, who went first, when it was still terra incognita.

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