Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 23 – Thirty-seven years ago, some two million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians formed a human chain more than 600 kilometers to remind the world they were committed to achieving freedom and independence, an action that became for many “one of the most powerful symbols of the struggle of nations for independence.”
Those quoted words belong to Aida Abdrakhmanova of the Tatarstan Independence Committee and vice president of the Anti-Imperial Bloc of Nations and highlight the fact that Baltic actions at the end of Soviet times continue to inspire non-Russians still under Moscow’s rule (tatarstan-independence-committee.blogspot.com/2026/08/blog-post_23.html).
The Tatarstan leader delivered those words in Stockholm at the site where in 1990-1991, Swedes gathered every Monday to support the recovery of Baltic independence, a place which she says “reminds us of that struggle and of the fact that the solidarity of free people can change history.”
Abdrakhmanova says that this tradition is continuing: “every Monday, following the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, rallies in support of Ukraine have been held here. People gather to support the Ukrainian people, who are defending their country, their freedom and their right to determine their own future.”
She and other Tatars continue this tradition not only in defense of Ukraine which is standing up to a Russian invasion but in the name of their own nation which one day “will become a free and democratic country, a country that will be a friend of Sweden, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.”
Thus, if can be said, the Tatarstan leader continued, just as when people joined hands 37 years ago “to show the world that freedom is possible,” so too today, “we continue to hold on to this chain” in support of our own national drive toward independence and others like it as well.
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