The Singing Revolution was a series of events from 1987 to 1991 that led to the restoration of independence of the three Soviet-occupied Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania at the end of the Cold War. 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.
The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic was de facto one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union between 1940–1941 and 1944–1990.
The Popular Front of Latvia was a political organisation in Latvia in the late 1980s and early 1990s which led Latvia to its independence from the Soviet Union. It was similar to the Popular Front of Estonia and the Sąjūdis movement in Lithuania.
The Sąjūdis, initially known as the Reform Movement of Lithuania, is a political organisation which led the struggle for Lithuanian independence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It was established on 3 June 1988 as the first opposition party in Soviet Lithuania, and was led by Vytautas Landsbergis. Its goal was to seek the return of independent status for Lithuania.
The Baltic Way or Baltic Chain was a peaceful political demonstration that occurred on 23 August 1989. Approximately two million people joined their hands to form a human chain spanning 690 kilometres (430 mi) across the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which at the time were occupied and annexed by the USSR and had a combined population of approximately eight million. The central government in Moscow considered the three Baltic countries constituent republics of the Soviet Union.
The Latvian National Awakening refers to three distinct but ideologically related national revival movements:
In Latvia, Russians have been the largest ethnic minority in the country for the last two centuries. The number of Russians in Latvia more than quadrupled during the Soviet occupation of Latvia when the size of the community grew from 8.8% of the total population in 1935 (206,499) to 34.0% in 1989 (905,515). It started to decrease in size again after Latvia regained independence in 1991 falling to 23.4% at the beginning of 2024.
The Communist Party of Latvia was a political party in Latvia.
The Popular Front of Moldova was a political movement in the Moldavian SSR, one of the 15 union republics of the former Soviet Union, and in the newly independent Republic of Moldova. Formally, the Front existed from 1989 to 1992. It was the successor to the Democratic Movement of Moldova, and was succeeded by the Christian Democratic Popular Front and ultimately by the Christian-Democratic People's Party.
Estonian nationalism refers to the ideological movement for attaining and maintaining identity, unity, freedom and independence on behalf of a population deemed by many, or most, of its members to be the Estonian people, having one Estonian homeland – Estonia, sharing the common Estonian culture, as well as ancestral myths and memories, a common economy and common legal rights and duties for all members.
The Popular Front of Estonia, introduced to the public by the Estonian politician Edgar Savisaar under the short-lived name Popular Front for the Support of Perestroika, was a political organisation in Estonia in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Edgar Savisaar introduced the idea of popular front during a TV show on 13 April 1988. The idea was developed through the year and finally The Estonian Popular Front was established on 1 October 1988 with a massively crowded congress which turned to a culmination of the first phase of the Singing Revolution.
The Barricades were a series of confrontations between the Republic of Latvia and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in January 1991 which took place mainly in Riga. The events are named for the popular effort of building and protecting barricades from 13 January until about 27 January. Latvia, which had declared restoration of independence from the Soviet Union a year earlier, anticipated that the Soviet Union might attempt to regain control over the country by force.
Sovetskaya Latviya was a major Russian-language newspaper in the Latvian SSR.
The Declaration "On the Restoration of Independence of the Republic of Latvia" was adopted on 4 May 1990 by the Supreme Soviet of the Latvian SSR in which Latvia declared independence from the Soviet Union. The Declaration stated that, although Latvia had de facto lost its independence in 1940, when it was annexed by the Soviet Union, the country had de jure remained a sovereign country as the annexation had been unconstitutional and against the will of the Latvian people.
Latvia is one of the three post-Soviet Baltic states having regained independence in 1991 and since 2004 is a member State of the European Union. After its independence there have been fundamental changes of political, economic and social nature that have turned Latvia into a democratic country with a free market economy. This reflects on the mass media landscape which is considered well-developed despite being subjected to a limited market and a linguistic and cultural split between Latvian (58.2%) and Russian speakers (37.5%). In 2017 Freedom House defined Latvia's press freedom status as “free", assigning to the country's press freedom a score of 26/100. The 2017 World Press Freedom Index prepared annually by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) states that media in Latvia have a "two-speed freedom", underlying different levels of freedom for Latvian-language and Russian-language media. According to RSF's Index the country is ranked 28th among 180 countries.
The three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – were re-occupied in 1944–1945 by the Soviet Union (USSR) following the German occupation. The Baltic states regained independence in 1990–1991.
Vladimir Ilyich Linderman is a Latvian and Russian publicist, political dissident of Jewish origin, and a member of Russia's unregistered National Bolshevik Party since 1997. Linderman is a non-citizen of Latvia.
The Russian language in Latvia is spoken by a significant minority. According to the External Migration Survey in 2017, it was the native language of 36% of the population, whereas 25.4% of the population were ethnic Russians.
Neatkarīgā Rīta Avīze is a Latvian language national daily newspaper in Latvia, published in Riga. Since 5 May 2020, it is only published online, with the last print edition coming out on 30 April 2020.
Sovetskaya Litva was a Russian-language daily newspaper published in the Lithuanian SSR. In tandem with the Lithuanian-language Tiesa, it was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of Lithuania, the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian SSR, and the Council of Ministers of the Lithuanian SSR. After the restoration of Lithuania's independence in 1990, the newspaper became an independent daily under the name Echo Litvy. Its circulation was 79,000 copies in 1981, 26,000 copies in 1993, and 12,000 copies in 1997. It discontinued publication in 2001 due to financial difficulties.
