[1][2] The term was coined by an Estonian activist and artist, Heinz Valk, in an article published a week after the 10–11 June 1988 spontaneous mass evening singing demonstrations at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds.
[3] During World War II, the three Baltic countries were invaded and occupied by the Stalinist Soviet Union in June 1940, and formally annexed into the USSR in August 1940.
Combined with the war in Afghanistan and the nuclear fallout in Chernobyl, grievances were aired in a publicly explosive and politically decisive manner.
Estonians were concerned about the demographic threat to their national identity posed by the influx of individuals from foreign ethnic groups to work on such large Soviet development projects as phosphate mining.
[4] Access to Western émigré communities abroad and, particularly in Estonia, informal relations with Finland, and access to Finnish TV showing the Western lifestyle also contributed to widespread dissatisfaction with the Soviet system and provoked mass demonstrations as repression on dissidents, nationalists, religious communities, and ordinary consumers eased substantially towards the end of the 1980s.
The Soviet government's plan to excavate phosphorite in the Lääne-Viru county with potentially catastrophic consequences for the environment and society was revealed in February 1987.
[5] The MRP-AEG group held the Hirvepark meeting in the Old Town of Tallinn at the anniversary of Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact on 23 August 1987, demanding to disclose and condemn its secret protocol.
[14] The Communist hardliners' coup attempt failed amidst mass pro-democracy demonstrations in Moscow led by Boris Yeltsin.
During the second half of the 1980s, the Environmental Protection Club became one of the most influential mass movements in the region and began to make demands for the restoration of Latvia's independence.
[citation needed] On 14 June 1987, the anniversary of the 1941 deportations, the human rights group "Helsinki-86", which had been founded a year earlier, organized people to place flowers at the Freedom Monument (Latvia's symbol of independence, which was erected in 1935).
The song, which speaks about the rebirth of a free Latvian nation, usually a staple of the festival, had been removed from the repertoire; the conductor, disliked by Soviet authorities, was sidelined at the closing concert.
[17] On 1 and 2 June 1988, the Writers' Union held a congress during which the democratization of society, Latvia's economic sovereignty, the cessation of immigration from the USSR, the transformation of industry, and the protection of Latvian language rights were discussed by delegates.
[citation needed] The congress of the Writers' Union stirred up public opinion and provided an additional stimulus for the general process of national revival.
On 19 August 1991, an unsuccessful attempt at a coup d'état took place in Moscow when a small group of prominent Soviet functionaries failed to regain power due to large pro-democracy demonstrations in Russia.
After the coup's failure, the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian Republic announced on 21 August 1991, that the transition period to full independence declared on 4 May 1990 had come to an end.
Therefore, Latvia was proclaimed a fully independent nation whose judicial foundation stemmed back to the statehood that existed before the occupation on 17 June 1940.Between 1956 and 1987, open public resistance to the Soviet regime was rare.
[18] As the CPL leadership changed, it decided to return Vilnius Cathedral, formerly used as a museum of fine arts, to the Catholic community on 21 October 1988.
[19] The latter change was instrumental in the removal of some officials (e.g. Nikolai Mitkin, who served as the Second Secretary of the CPL), but fueled tensions in Polish and Russian speaking communities.
By the end of the year, the CPL gave up its power monopoly and agreed to hold free elections for Supreme Soviet of Lithuanian SSR in 1990, which it lost.