BALTIC COOPERATION IN A CHANGING WORLD
On 23 August 1989, as a young history student, I was standing with my university mate Urmas in the Baltic Way on the Estonian-Latvian border, completely unaware of the enormous energy field I was connecting myself to. It was simply impossible to grasp the extent of the event or its international and historical significance at the time, on that gravel road among the fields and woods of Lilli. I still get goosebumps today when I think that it took only three weeks of planning to bring together over one million people and form a human chain over 600 kilometres long through the three occupied countries. The Baltic Way took place exactly 50 years after the signing of the secret Stalin-Hitler Pact (the M olotov Ribbentrop Pact – MRP) which triggered World War II. The disintegration of the world order in the aftermath of the Treaty of Versailles and the consequent international catastrophe cast Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into a struggle for survival which lasted for several decades....