The Power of Song serves not only as the quintessential study of what constitutes the heart of the remarkable and inspiring move-ments of the Baltic people, it will stand as a distinct contribution to the study of civil resistance movements overall.

peter ackerman, founding chair of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and coauthor

of Strategic Nonviolent Conflict and A Force More Powerful

The nonviolent liberation of the Baltic countries resulted from collective self-organization as three nations mobilized the power of song. Utilizing his knowledge of their languages and cultures, Guntis midchens provides the texts as well as the contexts of the music that helped three Davids to topple Goliath.

walter clemens, professor emeritus of political science at Boston University and associate at the Davis Center

for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University

An excellent and thorough work and a significant and important addition to our understanding of the role that folklore and popular culture play in shaping political events.

timothy tangherlini, UCLA

A monumental study addressing a sorely neglected aspect of one of the last centurys most dramatic geopolitical upheavals. This book will stand, for years and even decades to come, as the standard, authoritative source on its topic.

kevin c. karnes, Emory University

he Power of Song shows how the people of Estonia, Latvia,

and Lithuania confronted a military superpower and achieved independence in the Baltic Singing Revolution. When attacked by Soviet soldiers in public displays of violent force, singing Balts maintained faith in non-violent political action. More than 110 choral, rock, and folk songs are translated and interpreted in poetic, cultural, and historical contexts.

guntis midchens is the Kazickas Family Endowed Professor in Baltic Studies in the Scandinavian studies department at the University of Washington.

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New Directions in Scandinavian Studiesuniversity of washington pressSeattle www.washington.edu/uwpress

museum tusculanum pressCopenhagen www.mtp.dk

university ofwashington

press

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Guntis midchensnonviolent national culturein the baltic singing revolution

midchens

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ISBN 978-0-295-99310-2

smidchens-jacket-UWP.pdf 1 11/1/13 2:52 PM

NEW DIRECTIONS IN SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES

terje leiren and christine ingebritsen, series editors

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NEW DIRECTIONS IN SCANDINAVIAN STUDIES

This series offers interdisciplinary approaches to the study of the Nordic region of Scandinavia and the Baltic States and their cultural connections in North America. By redefining the boundaries of Scandinavian studies to include the Baltic States and Scandinavian America, the series presents books that focus on the study of the culture, history, literature, and politics of the North.

Small States in International Relations edited by Christine Ingebritsen, Iver B. Neumann, Sieglinde Gstohl, and Jessica Beyer

Danish Cookbooks: Domesticity and National Identity, 16161901 Carol Gold

Crime and Fantasy in Scandinavia: Fiction, Film, and Social Change Andrew Nestingen

Selected Plays of Marcus Thrane translated and introduced by Terje I. Leiren

Munchs Ibsen: A Painters Visions of a Playwright Joan Templeton

Knut Hamsun: The Dark Side of Literary Brilliance Monika agar

Nordic Exposures: Scandinavian Identities in Classical Hollywood Cinema Arne Lunde

Icons of Danish Modernity: Georg Brandes and Asta Nielsen Julie K. Allen

Danish Folktales, Legends, and Other Stories Timothy R. Tangherlini

The Power of Song: Nonviolent National Culture in the Baltic Singing Revolution Guntis midchens

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The Power of Songn o n v i o l e n t n a t i o n a l c u l t u r e i n t h e b a l t i c s i n g i n g r e v o l u t i o n

Guntis midchens

u n i v e r s i t y o f wa s h i n g t o n p r e s s Seattle and London

m u s e u m t u s c u l a n u m p r e s s Copenhagen

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This publication is supported by a grant from the Scandinavian Studies Publication Fund and the Baltic Studies Program at the University of Washington.

2014 by the University of Washington Press19 18 17 16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

University of Washington PressPO Box 50096, Seattle, WA 98145, USAwww.washington.edu/uwpress

Published in Europe by Museum Tusculanum Press126 Njalsgade, DK-2300 Copenhagen S, Denmarkwww.mtp.dk ISBN 978-87-635-4148-0

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataSmidchens, Guntis, 1963The power of song : nonviolent national culture in the Baltic singing revolution / Guntis Smidchens.pages cm. (New directions in Scandinavian studies)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-0-295-99310-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)1. Song festivalsPolitical aspectsBaltic States. 2. Choral singingPolitical aspectsBaltic States. 3. MusicPolitical aspectsBaltic States. I. Title. ML3917.B37S65 2013782.4209479dc23 2013029860

The paper used in this publication is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984.

this book is made possible by a collaborative grant from the andrew w. mellon foundation.

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Lifes greatest moments are so simple. A people singing. Ivar Ivask

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c o n t e n t s

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction: Three Nonviolent National Cultures 3

1. Balts Speak to America, July 4, 1998 7

2. Herders Discovery of Baltic Songs 24

3. Three Singing Nations and Their Songs 50

4. Songs of Warrior Nations 107

5. Soviet Power versus Power of the Powerless 135

6. Living within the Truth in Choral Songs 160

7. Living within the Truth in Rock Songs 209

8. Living within the Truth in Folk Songs 261

9. Nonviolent National Singing Traditions 307

Appendix I: Index and Map of Place Names 329 Appendix II: Chronology 333 Appendix III: Song Annotations and Index 339 Notes 357 Bibliography, Discography, and Filmography 409 General Index 435

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a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

In writing this book I have had the aid of a number of institutions and individuals whose role I gratefully acknowledge. The Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections provided copies of sound record-ings that are at the center of this study. The University of Washington Libraries ensured access to most published sources quoted here. The EEVA Digital Text Repository for Older Estonian Literature, the Digi-tal Collections at the National Library of Latvia, the Lithuanian Folk Culture Centre website, and Google Books gave easy online access to rare publications. The National Library of Estonia helped locate numer-ous songbooks in its collection. In Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, musi-cians and singers opened their homes and rehearsals to me and invited me to sing with them. People whom I interviewed in person or by email gave insights beyond any information found in published sources. Their names appear in notes, but I wish to emphasize here that their generos-ity and friendly assistance enriched this work immeasurably.

The University of Washington Department of Scandinavian Stud-ies provided a Junior Faculty Release Quarter and a Summer Research Grant, and made possible several expeditions to the Baltic. In 19911992 and 1997, my fieldwork was supported in part by grants from the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information Agency, and the US Department of State. In 1999 and 2000, travel grants from the Open Society Support Foundation Group Research Support Scheme allowed me to meet colleagues in Latvia for valuable discussions about national identity formation. The UW Chamber Singers and UW Chorale invited me to travel with them on their Baltic concert tours in 2000, 2005, and 2010, allowing me to

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witness firsthand the power that songs have in creating bridges across language barriers.

Portions of the manuscript were read and commented on by Geof-frey Boers, Mimi Daitz, Thomas DuBois, Ulrich Gaier, Heather MacLaughlin Garbes, Terje Leiren, Lalita Muiniece, ivil Ramo-kait, and Rimas ilinskas. Kanni Labi offered a particularly inci-sive reading of several chapters. The entire manuscript was read by Dace Bula, Kevin Karnes, Violeta Kelertas, Aldis Purs, and Zinta midchens, whose critique and encouragement were invaluable. Stu-dents in classes I taught at the University of Washington have pro-vided a sounding board for ideas and translation attempts. Scandina-vian Department research assistants Sean Hughes and Axel Thorson helped index my archive and edit the manuscript. The editors of the New Directions in Scandinavian Studies Series gave support and sug-gestions for improvements. Tim Zimmermann, Kerrie Maynes, and the editors and anonymous readers at the University of Washington Press helped shape the manuscripts final version.

Illustrations for this book were possible thanks to the assistance of the directors and staff at the institutions mentioned in the credits. Sil-vestras Gaiinas, Ojrs Griis, Ain Haas, Inta Kaepja, Andres Kas-ekamp, Veiko Lukmann, Angonita Rupyt, Valters erbinskis, and Aura Valaniauskien also offered critical help in acquiring images and other resources. Zinta midchens crafted a map of place names mentioned in this book.

All of these institutions and people have improved my work consid-erably, but I alone remain responsible for this books content. I thank the four teachers who opened up Baltic worlds for me: Violeta Keler-tas, Lalita Muiniece, Harri Mrk, and Toivo Raun, and my father, who sang with his children to pass the time on long car trips.

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The Power of Song

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3IntroductionThree Nonviolent National Cultures

A nation who makes its revolution by singing and smiling should be a sublime example to all, wrote the Estonian journalist Heinz Valk, in the June 1988 editorial whose title, Singing Revolution, gave the nonviolent Baltic independence movement its name. It is impossible to even imagine in Estonias city streets the riots, barricades, burning automobiles and similar features of mass revolt by large nations. This is not our way!1 The Baltic way had begun a year earlier when cou-rageous Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians publicly broke through Soviet restrictions on free speech and assembly. It gained force as atten-dance at political meetings grew from handfuls to hundreds of thou-sands. It culminated in the election of the three governments that in spring of 1990 declared independence from the Soviet Union and estab-lished civilian-based defense as the means of liberation. The movements nonviolent foundations were tested from January to August 1991, when Soviet soldiers killed people in public displays of violent force. Esto-nia, Latvia, and Lithuania nevertheless sustained policies based on non-violence, and achieved their goal of political independence when they established diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation from July 29 to August 24, 1991. At this great moment, the power of nonviolent political action was reconfirmed. What Estonians, Latvians, and Lithua-nians did, exclaims a leading scholar of nonviolence, stands as a major milestone in the history of the modern world.2

Why did the struggle for Baltic independence come to be called the Singing Revolution? What did they sing? And what role did singing play in the Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian campaigns of political

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Introduction4

mobilization and nonviolent action? Many scholars have documented and analyzed the events that led to Baltic independence; most have focused on the parliamentary processes by which nonformal Baltic citizens groups created the three governments that severed ties with Moscow.3 Some have studied the movements nonviolent tactics and expanded the Singing Revolutions history to include events that took place many decades or even a century earlier.4 Few, however, have gone to the heart of Baltic nonviolent political action in the late twen-tieth century: the songs and singing that gave the movement its name.5

At public gatherings, Balts sang. This book offers a small selection of their choral, rock, and folk songs in English translation. Follow-ing traditions of thick description in folklore studies, song texts are presented in their historical, cultural, and poetic context.6 The goal is to interpret meanings as Balts themselves may have imagined them when they sang, or, following the lead of Anthony David Smith, to enter the participants inner world.7 Ideally, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians should be allowed to speak for themselves, select-ing, performing, and commenting on their own songs. This is why the sixteen songs in the books first chapter carry particular weight. They were documented at the 1998 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, in a con-cert in which native participants remembered their Singing Revolu-tion.8 Songs presented in later chapters, too, were usually first selected by persons other than the author. At some point in national history, each of the one hundred and twelve songs in this book was identified by an Estonian, Latvian, or Lithuanian, or in some cases by an out-side observer, as a key text, worthy of inclusion in the discourse on national identity. Some songs, for example, were foregrounded by per-sons who placed them first or last in a songbook or a concert program, or by audiences who enthusiastically requested encores. Some songs were selected because they entered national tradition, to be quoted and adapted by poets and songwriters in new, popular songs. Many of the songs in this book were sung during the Singing Revolution. Documentary filmmakers and memoir authors have quoted them as a means of capturing the movements spirit.

In 1998 at the Smithsonian festival, my job as interpreter for Baltic singers and speakers as they performed on stage was to convey to the English-speaking American audience, within a split-second, a sense of what the singers were singing. On paper, there is more time to ponder and translate each word, but the sounds of the singing and the faces of the singers are gone. The written words on this books pages are

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voices from the past, textual shards of a once-living work of verbal art, removed by decades from their original performances, transcribed and translated into a language and cultural context very different from their own.9 Space restrictions do not allow inclusion of musical notation or texts in the original languages; these sources may nowadays be easily retrieved online, or found in the publications listed in notes. This book needs to stand alone, too. It should contain poetry that might, albeit dis-tantly, recreate the feelings of the people who once sang it. My English translations attempt to use sounds and rhythms that might help a reader hear them, perhaps, as a native might experience them in Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, German, or Russian. Some of the translations fol-low the original meter precisely, others retain some poetic form but are not singable, while still others sacrifice poetic form to reproduce con-tent or intertextual connections. Together, these texts make up a web of songs and performances in cultural and historical context, recreating meanings beyond the sum total of individual texts.

The chapters of this book offer some pieces in the puzzle of the Singing Revolution. Why were songs particularly resonant symbols of national identity and political action? The story begins in chapter 2 with the eighteenth-century philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, who iden-tified songs as symbols of heritage and as models for effective poetry, and used them as rhetorical tools that would bring about social change. How did these ideas diffuse to the masses of the three nations? Chap-ter 3 sketches out the transition from Herders philosophical interest in folk poetry to the nineteenth-century construction of Baltic national cultures, and to the birth of singing nations in song festival traditions. Singing traditions established a fundamental means of nonviolent politi-cal change, but parallel strands of violent national military songs also emerged; these are engaged in chapter 4. Chapter 5 introduces the ideo-logically charged traditions of Soviet mass culture that were imposed upon the Baltic under Stalinism, and presents a mechanism by which individuals could maintain non-Soviet identities, most notably by sing-ing songs that did not follow the officially prescribed rules of Soviet socialist realism. Chapters 6, 7, and 8 outline non-Soviet singing that emerged in three styles: choral, rock/pop, and folk. All of these tradi-tions converged in the Singing Revolution.

This book aims to expand our knowledge of Baltic national cul-tures and nationalism. It also contributes to our understanding of nonviolent political movements. In the international study of nonvio-lence, many books have been devoted to political tactics, and to the

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Introduction6

biographies and moral and philosophical writings of movement lead-ers.10 The past two decades have produced many ethnographic descrip-tions of conflict resolution in peaceful societies.11 We know less, however, about the shared texts and traditions through which large masses of individuals assumed ownership of tactical and philosophi-cal principles and joined these movements to give them their people power.12 Singing is often overlooked. The standard history of non-violence by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall, A Force More Power-ful, a companion volume to the six-part PBS broadcast, lists in its index many key words related to nonviolent struggle: ahimsa, armed struggle, boycotts, Catholic Church, civil disobedience, doctors, elec-tions, financial sanctions, general strikes, hunger strikes, Internet, leaf-lets, marches, media, negotiating, noncooperation, petitions, refusal to work, resignations, self-rule, sit-ins, strikes, (withholding) taxes, underground press, violence, work stay-awaysbut no singing, and no songs. A case study of the Baltic Singing Revolution may help add these key words to the study of nonviolence.

Because the Baltic independence movement combined nationalist and nonviolent ideologies, this book engages a well-known problem, the question of whether it is possible to reconcile nonviolent prin-ciples with a pursuit of nationalist power.13 In the Baltic, Mark Beiss-inger finds that non-violence and passionate ethnic identity need not be incompatible, and argues that the emotional bonds created by nationalism were a resource for peaceful mass politics.14 The three national cultures provided Baltic activists with much more than ethnic solidarity. They contained a powerful arsenal of symbols that could inspire and sustain faith in nonviolent struggle. Connections between the ideology of nonviolence and Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian national identities reach back two centuries, drawing deep strands from the nineteenth-century works of native Baltic nation builders. In 1873, the Latvian national poet Auseklis exclaimed, The power of songs drove away war! Ausekliss poem passed into the national choral canon, and resurfaced a century later at the national song fes-tival of 1990. In the Baltic, nonviolence and the struggle for national political independence were not merely compatiblethey merged in a powerful, unified current of songs. To be Estonian, Latvian, or Lithu-anian in 198891 meant to be politically nonviolent. True to Heinz Valks assertion quoted above, Ausekliss song and many other songs of the Baltic Singing Revolution offer inspiration to the nonviolent people and nations of our world.

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