On 11 September 1988, an estimated 300,000 people gathered at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds to listen speeches by the Estonian independence movement activists and sing songs.
On 11 September 1988, the Song Festival Grounds hosted arguably the largest mass gathering the Estonian capital had ever seen, when an estimated 300,000 people from across the country came together in an unprecedented national solidarity – the unity unseen since.
From a song against phosphorite excavation to the Singing Revolution
This concert was another milestone – and one of the most important ones – in a peaceful independence movement that had kicked off a year before by a vocal opposition to the Soviet government’s plan to excavate phosphorite in Estonia’s Lääne-Viru county.
Since the reformist Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had allowed more press freedom, some Estonian journalists were brave enough to tackle and inform the public about the phosphorite excavation’s potentially catastrophic consequences to the environment. The Estonian national television’s environmental programme, “Panda”, was the first to reveal the truth in February 1987 when its host, Juhan Aare, interviewed a Soviet official in Moscow. The official announced that the Soviet authorities were planning to start mining phosphorite in Estonia by 1997.
The revelation started a public environmental campaign against the excavation and the Soviet authorities eventually withdrew their mining plans. During the campaign, in May 1987, some of the biggest names in the Estonian pop and rock music scene at the time gathered to record a song and film a video for “Ei ole üksi ükski maa” (“No Country is Alone”). This subtle protest song was written by Alo Mattiisen and Jüri Leesment and is considered a prelude to the five most important Singing Revolution songs that Mattiisen would write in the following year.
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