Estonia - May 1990
The following was first posted here on July 22, 2010. I am re-posting it after reading an article in today’s Wall Street Journal about The Singing Revolution – a documentary that is scheduled to air on PBS Saturday at 3:00 pm EDT and Sunday at 11:00 pm EDT. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Soviet Union. To gain a better perspective of what that meant to those under Soviet rule, this is from the narration of that documentary:
But Estonia’s darkest and bloodiest chapter began in 1939 when the Soviets crossed the border. Within months thousands were executed, others disappeared. In one night 10,000 men, women and children were taken from their homes, loaded into cattle cars, and shipped to slave labor camps in Siberia. More than half never returned… But Estonians fought, and sang, and survived.
Culture is what united the Estonian people. Culture is the vehicle that carried them to freedom. It is our great Southern Culture that unites us as a people. It is that same Southern Culture that will determine the fate of future generations of Southerners.
• • •
My grandmother was born and raised in one of the Baltic states (Latvia), so I find myself drawn to cultural news from that area. A video has been making its way around the web recently that shows tens of thousands of Estonians gathered together to sing songs that unite them as a people. In June 1988, spontaneous night singing demonstrations took place in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania calling for independence from the Soviet Union. It was the singing of folk songs that reminded them that they are a single and unique people united together as a nation. Estonia is a Nordic country, and as you watch the video, it is obvious that they are, indeed, one people united by blood and culture.
What does this have to do with Southern culture and the goals of the Confederate Colonel project? This is about preserving a culture – A culture. This is not a “multicultural” event. Diluting a culture by mixing in other cultures does not strengthen it – mixing cultures weakens all those involved. The social diseases of “political correctness” and “multiculturalism” have as a chief goal the destruction of Southern culture and the Western European heritage that it is based on. Note that cultures can be, and often are, adopted by others who may not be native-born, but wish to assimilate into that culture. In other words, we are talking about a culture and not blood inheritance. The key point is that those born “outside” actively assimilate into the culture without the culture adapting to them. That is the only way to preserve a culture while still accepting others into the native land of that culture.
(Note: The sound drops out in the last few seconds of the video.)
This is a trailer of a film about The Singing Revolution:
The Lyrics
Keep in mind that these lyrics were done as a literal translation, and words and cultural memory don’t always make a smooth transition from one language to another.
Isamaa Ilu Hoieldes
(Cherishing the Beauty of the Land of my Fathers)
Keeping the beauty of fatherland.
Fighting against the enemy:
Pay attention, pay attention,
Pay attention, pay attention!
If you believe in yourself,
In opinions of the wise,
In shoulders of the strong,
In mightiness of the elders,
In nimbleness of young men,
In sisters, brothers,
Above all in yourself,
Then you get better life.
If you believe the talk of the wolf,
Fear the yelps of the dogs,
Hear the curses of the masters,
Complains of the underlings,
Bitings of the greedy,
Admonishments of the low ones,
Scolds of the blind,
Then you get nothing.
If you sink into lies,
Stooping into dreams,
On all fours under the order,
Bowing under the rouble,
Then you get fleas in groin,
Itches in your heart,
Halters on your head, bones in your stomach,
Then you go to hell.
If you believe in yourself,
Then you believe in the folk,
In the farms, in the wiseness,
In the teaching, in the rights,
In the birch grove of home place,
In the swallow by the clouds,
Then you get mighty spirit,
Then you get better life.
Also, here is an interesting blog article about this event.
Dear Sirs,
The armed resistance of the Baltic States was truly admirable. First, after the First World War, against the Friekorps, and both the Russian Whites and Reds, later, from the Second World War into the 1950’s, against the Soviets.
The Waffen-SS raised three full-strength divisions from Estonians and Latvians. The Latvian Waffen-SS won more Knight’s Crosses than any other non-Reichsdeutsche ethnicity/nationality (the Dutch won the second-most). Army Group Kurland, surrounded in southwestern Latvia, tied down a significant number of Soviet forces, becoming the only undefeated army group of the Wehrmacht. Baltic anti-Soviet guerillas remained active over ten years after the end of the War.
Unlike the Waffen-SS divisions recruited in Germany proper, very few Estonians or Latvians fought for National Socialism, or were full members of the SS. With the exception of Communists and Jews, the Baltic nationalities(as well as the Western Ukrainians) saw the Germans as the far lesser of two evils (see also Uniforms, Organization and History of the Waffen-SS, volume 5).
This topic is, yet again, an example of the deliberate neglect, or at best, villification, of inconvenient subjects by the egalitarian quasi-Marxist-dominated academia and media in these united States and Western Europe today (this is what yours truly, found in the colleges, bookstores and libraries around New York and San Francisco).
A New Jersey Copperhead