Each nation has many days that mark the calendar. Some are holidays devoted to happy celebrations and others to more somber occasions. I write this on August 20 – the day of the restoration of Estonia’s Independence thirty-three years ago in 1991. This is the case of a day that brought joy, hope, and relief but derived from the horrible occurrence of a nexus of evil.
Another day with both terrible and wonderful outcomes is the story of Black Ribbon Day and the Baltic Way. One would not have been possible without the other, for better or worse.
Both happened on August 23. First, beginning with the signing of the secret protocols between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in 1939, it was the penstroke that would carve Central and Eastern Europe into halves – “spheres of influence” – to be dominated by Stalin and Hitler. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, known historically by the names of the two foreign ministers who met to plot the agreement, was the raison d’être for the immediate outbreak of World War II. Hitler and then Stalin would invade Poland in September of that year, and Stalin’s outrageous demands to give up territory and sovereignty were placed on the three Baltic countries. Finland refused similar terms, and the Winter War would erupt on November 30, 1939, when the Soviets attacked Finland. After bravely resisting the massive Soviet onslaught, Finland was forced to cede nearly ten percent of its easternmost territory. Bessarabia (much of it in now modern-day Moldova) was seized by the Soviets from Romania in 1940.
For Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the collusion between the Nazis and Soviets meant over half a century of misery and tragedy. The first year of Soviet occupation was followed by a German occupation of three years, and then decades of new Soviet terror. The United States, fortunately, never recognized the illegal Soviet takeover of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
From the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, we move to Black Ribbon Day. August 23 became a day of remembrance, with the name “Black Ribbon Day” beginning to take hold in the West during the 1980s in protest against Soviet domination.
In Canada, the concept emerged in the mid-1980s, when an International Black Ribbon Day Committee was formed, which was led by Markus Hess (1953 – 2022). Black ribbons were to be synonymous with August 23. In 1986, Black Ribbon Day demonstrations were held in 21 cities worldwide – including throughout Canada, Sweden, Australia, and the United States. By 1991, demonstrations were held in 56 cities around the world.
In 1987, Black Ribbon Day protests spread to the Baltic countries (such gatherings were prohibited until 1988 by Soviet authorities) and culminated in the Baltic Way in 1989, which was to become one of the best-known manifestations of peaceful resistance during that year of revolutions. Two million people joined hands from Tallinn to Vilnius to form a human chain, as a protest against the continuing Soviet occupation. The 430-mile-long chain would equal the distance between Washington, DC and Boston or Cleveland, or a bit longer than from San Francisco to Los Angeles.
Once freedom was restored by the early 1990s, the idea of codifying the day in the European historical memory developed.
In 2009, Estonia and Latvia both adopted the designation of August 23 as a “Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.” Lithuanian adopted that same year the “European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism and Day of the Baltic Way,” a double anniversary of both events.
In 2011, the Platform of European Memory and Conscience (PEMC), based in Prague, was formed to join public and private institutions and organizations from 24 countries, including the United States and Canada. There are currently 72 organizations represented, including the Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC), which has been a member organization since 2013. PEMC is, according to their website, “active in research, documentation, awareness raising and education about the totalitarian regimes which befell Europe in the 20th century.”
PEMC’s establishment traces itself to the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism, which was initiated by the Czech government and signed on June 3, 2008 by leading European politicians, former political prisoners and historians, among them former Czech President Václav Havel and future German President Joachim Gauck, calling for “Europe-wide condemnation of, and education about, the crimes of communism.”
In 2019, then-House Baltic Caucus Co-chairmen Rep. John Shimkus and Rep. Adam Schiff introduced House Resolution 300 to recognize the victims of Soviet and Nazi regimes. The resolution expresses “support for the designation of August 23 […] as Black Ribbon Day to recognize the victims of Soviet and Nazi regimes.” The resolution was referred to the committee, but no further action was taken. An earlier “Black Ribbon Day” resolution was introduced by Rep. Shimkus in 2013 and garnered nearly 50 co-sponsors. A modified version of the legislation passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on May 21, 2014.
While in Canada, Black Ribbon Day has been an official day of remembrance since 2009 with significant gatherings throughout the country, the occasion has also been marked each year in the United States. Significant observations have been held in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and in Washington, DC particularly during “round” anniversaries in 2009, and 2019, in which about 300 participants joined hands in a circle in the rain in front of the U.S. Capitol in a re-enactment of the Baltic Way.
Commemorations have taken on different meanings elsewhere. For instance, on Black Ribbon Day in 2020, around 50,000 people joined hands in a human chain called the Freedom Way, stretching from Vilnius to the Belarusian border to support democracy in Belarus and express solidarity with the 2020 Belarusian protests. Other human chains have taken place in Taiwan, Catalonia, and Hong Kong. On August 23, 2024, a Baltic Way memorial event will take place again in Washington, DC, organized by JBANC, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and the embassies of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
