Search - The Singing Revolution on DVD

Never forget the courage of small countries

Michael W. Perry | Author of Untangling Tolkien, Seattle, WA | 03/17/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Far too little has been said about why the Soviet Union collapsed, freeing the captive nations of Eastern Europe. Perhaps that is because during the 1970s and 1980s all too many in our chattering classes invested their intellectual capital in criticizing President Reagan's claim that communism was doomed to a soon demise. Few are as unwilling to admit their errors as intellectuals.

This documentary tells the story of how Estonia, a small country that, judging by this film, must have some of the prettiest women in the world, won its freedom from communist domination. Like Poland, Latvia and the other Baltic countries, for centuries the Estonian people have fought to retain their national identity despite invasions and conquests from the east and west, the most recently being the Soviet-German-Soviet occupations between 1939 and 1991. As you will see in this film, one key to the retention of Estonia's national identity was a tradition that included enormous folk music festivals with thousands of singers.

I will not spoil this excellent documentary by describing the actual events through which a nation of a little over a million people took on the Soviet superpower, but I will stress that history offers us no guarantee of happiness and security. Though shrunken in size, Russia is still behaving like a bully and, as G. K. Chesterton warned almost a century ago, the peace of Europe hinges on keeping the little countries of Eastern Europe free and independent.

In 1932, Chesterton warned that, if Britain and France did not stand firm, the next war would break out over a border dispute between Germany and Poland, precisely what happened in 1939. Like Churchill, Chesterton was ridiculed for his alarmist point of view, but what was true then remains true today. The peace of Europe still depends on what happens to the little countries of Eastern Europe. The next major war could break out as Russia, collapsing as its oil and natural gas reserves become exhausted, invades little Estonia in 2019, much as it did when war began seventy years earlier.

-Michael W. Perry, Chesterton on War and Peace: Battling the Ideas and Movements That Led to Nazism and World War II"