Reviewing James and Maureen Tusty's The Singing Revolution for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, film critic Joe Williams called the film "inspiring if one-sided," questioning whether the directors ignored ethnic violence against the many Russians who entered Estonia under Soviet transplantation programs (such ethnic Russians now comprise a quarter of Estonia's population). But after his review ran, Williams received a phone call from a reader that changed his presumption that the Tustys' documentary glosses over a bloody history of ethnic strife:
For most Americans, the tragedies wrought by Stalin, Hitler, Mao and other tyrants are mere abstractions that we glimpse on the History Channel while we're searching for "reality" TV. But for a reader from Shiloh, Ill., a documentary about Estonia called "The Singing Revolution" (which is currently playing at the Tivoli) was a chapter from his life story.On the voice mail he left for me, the gentleman did not reveal his name; but the accent and the emotion in his voice convinced me his story was genuine. He said when was a student, the Soviets who had wrested Estonia from the Nazis--and would occupy it for sixty years--labeled him a capitalist sympathizer and sent him to a series of concentration camps in Siberia. (His family's problems with Russians started earlier, when his uncle's shoes were stolen by Josef Stalin's father.)
The man was back in Estonia during the so-called Singing Revolution of the late '80s, when large public gatherings were galvanized by patriotic folk songs. The film suggests that as the numbers swelled and Soviet tanks rolled into the Baltic nations, the people responded with non-violent resistance.
I said in my review that the film was one-sided, because surely there was bloodshed and retribution on both sides of the struggle. But maybe there really is such a thing as heroic pacifism, and the will of the people can't be stopped when they unite behind their principles.
Williams does well to acknowledge that the Estonian people did not let destructive ethnic conflict supplant their common pursuit of freedom. Their country's peaceful triumph over authoritarianism has since allowed the small Baltic nation to establish itself as a solidly democratic parliamentary republic, to liberalize its economy, and to expand individual freedoms beyond once-wildest imaginings. The Heritage Foundation now ranks Estonia only marginally behind the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom among the world's freest countries, an achievement that is all the more remarkable for having been achieved peacefully, democratically, and cooperatively in less than two decades.
James and Maureen Tusty's The Singing Revolution is now screening in theaters across the United States. For more details of current and upcoming screenings, see the film's website at SingingRevolution.com.