Guest post: 25 years on, remembering the “singing revolution”

By Imants Liegis, Latvia’s ambassador to Hungary

This Saturday marks the 25th anniversary of the world’s biggest and longest, peaceful, mass demonstration.

On August 23, 1989, some 2m Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians held hands to form a human chain, 600km long, linking all three capital cities, from Tallinn, Estonia, in the north, via Riga in Latvia to Vilnius in the south-west – at a time when all three nations were still forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union.

Dubbed the Baltic Way, this long thin line of humanity finally linked up at 7.00 that evening.