The Singing Revolution, a hetalia - axis powers fanfic

Author's Note: This is a fanfiction based on the events of the Singing Revolution, which took place between 1988 and 1991 in the nations of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, at the time part of the Soviet Union. It was an entirely peaceful operation that succeeded in gaining the independence of all three countries after many long years of rebellion. In my opinion, it is not talked about nearly enough, and I have yet to read about it in any history book-and yet, it is literally my favorite thing ever in the history of things. So I figured I simply had to write about it. So cool. So, so cool.

It is told from Estonia's POV.

NOTE: The song used is called "Mu Isamaa On Minu Arm" ("Land of My Fathers, Land That I Love), and it was the main song that was sung by the public during the Revolution in Estonia (who was arguably the leader of the movement as far as the nations were concerned). No matter how many Soviet instruments were used to try and drown out the singing, the Estonian people could not be silenced.

A revolution fought with breath, not blood.

That was the idea in my mind. Not because we weren't strong enough—but because we were. We were strong enough that we knew, our voices, our resilience, our lifeblood, that which still pulsed within our veins, was enough to make us free.

As long as there was life within us, there was no turning back. Once it had begun, it would not cease. Until the last man had fallen, there would be no end to us.

So many years of torture. We had faced such that no man could understand unless they had lived it as we had. Trapped within our own homes, and yet, they were no longer our homes, as from all sides grit and ash and fire were rained upon us, until we no longer knew nor cared which side was which, whom was whom. Whomever could free us was our ally, nary our friend. We were weary. We only wanted it all to end.

I need not tell of the horrors of this long, long era. It was borne only of hatred, and revenge, and enslavement, and as far as we are concerned, this was not the time of our nations. This was the time of those around us, because we were not involved in such matters. No, without them, we would not have suffered—and yet, with them, we found our strength. No matter what cinders poured down on our heads, the rage that blazed on above us, we closed our eyes, and we knelt below the chaos, and we endured.

That's what we are. We are survivors, for always. There can be no other way. So many others have failed, but us three, we have persisted. How this could be…well, it is because we do not give in. The methods of the rest of the world do not concern us. We've seen what they have wrought, and we've endured through what they brought upon us, under the flames of the crossfire, as we played the charred pawns between the two armies, perhaps more. All throughout history, we have been these pawns—and it was time to change the game. We would be players no more.

While the world swallowed fire around us, it burnt our backs. We crouched and we waited, and slowly, steadily, our resolve grew with our weariness. Others fought viciously, because they had something to fight for, something they could still taste in their mouths, as they had grown accustomed to it, or times were better, they said, we could change everything and get more than our share and we could be happy again. In this way, us three and the rest of the world were not entirely at odds. We wanted our happiness too—but this was a different kind of goal. What we knew, we had all but forgotten; only the oldest of our people could remember a time, a brief one at that, when things had been different, and there was peace. Peace could not last a lifetime, they would say, and we knew as well. For nations, such a thing is as obvious and inherent as breathing itself. As long as we lived, we could see the cycles, and we grew to learn them by heart: the living, the happiness, the depressions, the struggle, the battle, the war, the pain, and loss, and hope, and the living. The happiness was what we desired, as it was a time of the greatest value for all. It's all we'd ever wanted, all of us, not only the three of us, but the whole world.

Such a simple goal. How it could warp the minds of so many, over and over through the generations, the need, the desire to sacrifice one's happiness for that of another, in the most selfish of manners. So, perhaps not so simple, as it was complicated beyond recognition by the players of such a game. And us three, like many others—well, we were just the unfortunates that were handed the role of being those who stood in between.

And so, we were different. What we knew, we only knew from brief periods, a passing glimpse of a thought from a person on the street, who perhaps knew a decade, once, where they were able to be happy, and free. We had seen so much, even we had all but forgotten. It seemed despair yawned in our bellies, and it swallowed everything around it as a giant sinkhole within our minds.

Oh, how we were tired of that despair. We had known nothing but, for so long, that the taste of freedom was drowned out. We longed to taste it again, as perhaps we had once, because, well, we were told it was glorious. Whatever this meant, we wanted to taste it. We had so little to lose, what we did have was precious. And that was life.

Life came with pride. Life was one's family, one's friends, and the whole nation, no, the three of us. We had all endured the same, huddled together in the firestorm, and we protected each other. The three of us were each other's safeguard, and we might as well have been the same people. Of course, each of us were different—we had our own traditions, languages, looks, ways—but at the end of the day, we knew, we had seen the same things. We had seen the blood that beat within our veins, and it was the same. We decided, tacitly, by nothing more than a passing glance, the tiny nod of a head, the smallest of acknowledgements as such, that, for as long as we were alive in the storm of ash, we were united.

It began with me. Tired, exhausted, wearied by this life of curling in the dust, I broke out—but not in the way one might expect. At first, it was tentative, because, above all, I knew, once the first drop of scarlet touched the street, there would be no cease to the river. Singing songs, the simplest, most unifying of practices. However much the Russians had tried, they could not quell our identity, our sense of self. I was not Soviet. And I sang, quietly at first, the words dancing on and from my tongue, familiar and sweet and right, because they were mine. Something that would not, could not belong to the state. They were my words, and they were my people's words.

And gradually, they grew louder, and louder, and they spread. What could be the harm in simple songs? And that was just it—there was no harm. Even the others had grown weary of their policies, and now, no one knew quite how to deal with these things that belonged to me, to my people.

Mu isamaa on minu arm,

Kell' südant annud ma,

Sull' laulan ma, mu ülem õnn,

Mu õitsev Eestimaa.

Sull' laulan ma, mu ülem õnn,

Mu õitsev Eestimaa.

Land of my fathers, land that I love,

I've given my heart to her,

I sing to you, my supreme happiness,

My flourishing Estonia.

I sing to you, my supreme happiness,

My flourishing Estonia.

Over time, as we had waited below the rain of fire, the blaze itself began to burn itself out, and there was not enough for burning me. Where once they would have beaten me, now they were bewildered, and they glanced nervously around the world, to see if it was watching. What would happen if the other nations found out? He was constantly looking over his shoulder, and suddenly, I stood before him, and where I had been silent before, I found my voice.

I stood before him, and I gazed upon him, and our eyes met, a careful regard. Slowly, I began to sing, in the face of everything I had come to know and everything I had come to dread. Louder still, over the years, my voice grew, until finally, my shoulders were squared, I lifted my chin, I stared at him, openly, defiantly, and I sang my words, my words. My own.

Su valu südames mul keeb,

Su õnn ja rõõm mind rõõmsaks teeb,

Mu isamaa,

Mu isamaa.

Your pain boils in my heart,

Your happiness and joy make me happy too,

Land of my fathers,

Land of my fathers.

Lithuania was the first to join me, as he was the first to go. I do not know why, even to this day, why he was chosen. I had begun this, I was the one behind it, I was the one who sang the words of my own design, the one who first rejected the policies and the flames of the Soviet torch. He had been the one beside me, and that one day, as I was singing, he looked over at me, and his green eyes dawned a new look of understanding, of brotherhood, and he gave me the slightest nod. Then, he too, began to sing—not my words, nor anyone else's, but his. As I have said, we were not the same…but we were, in our own way. We sang together, for a while, and then the littlest one's eyes glowed as he, too, joined us, with his own words. We made music, and it was a glorious time, because our bodies were still covered in ash, but they blew off us in clouds, as our breath carried the words and hopes and wishes and dreams of each of us, each of our people in their own, because we were not the Soviet Union, but each of us.

Mu isamaa on minu arm,

Ei teda jäta ma.

Ja peaksin sada surma ma ta pärast surema,

Ja peaksin sada surma ma ta pärast surema.

Land of my fathers, land that I love,

I can't abandon her.

For her a hundred times I shall give my life,

For her a hundred times I shall give my life.

And as the days, and weeks, and months went on, our voices grew louder. Finally, we were all but shouting our love to the skies, our passion for everything we held dear and wished to, our grief for everything that had been lost in our impossible struggles. The world had abandoned us—and it was time to show that we did not need the rest of the world to live on. We had made it so far, and even when no one else looked upon us to see that we were still moving, under the rubble, there was still life in us. For fifteen minutes, on August 23rd, 1989, we were no longer three separate nations in the eyes of the world, nor in our own eyes, however much such an image had been dissolved—no, we were one nation, our hearts united as our capitals were, not only by our governments, but by our people, each hand locked with another, all the way across the land. The world finally looked upon us, we could not be ignored, as we stood before them, displaying something they could never do and never accomplish, uniting completely across three borders through everything that was us. We could not be ignored, any longer.

Kas laimab võõra kadedus.

Sa siiski elad südames,

Mu isamaa,

Mu isamaa.

Envy makes strangers slander you.

You are still alive in my heart,

Land of my fathers,

Land of my fathers.

And eventually, the response came. As I've said, I could not say why Lithuania was the one who was chosen—I had been the instigator, I was the music and the first voice—but, even after that bright morning, on January 13th, 1991, when the streets of Vilnius ran dark with the blood of the first singers to die, we were not broken, and we were not deterred. Lithuania—no, my dear brother, my man in arms—stood up, from where he had been on one knee, bloodied on the street, and his viridian eyes blazed with the lifeblood of his entire nation. He stood up, and they all linked arms, as I had shown them, the day I began to sing, all the way back on the 14th of May, 1988. The people stood, defiant in the face of the bullets and the tanks and those countless instruments of death, which had been placed before them for the sole purpose of ending their crusade, residing in life. And they sang, unified in their message, as their words rang out above the bodies of those who had given their lives so easily so that there may be an end to the downpour of ash. And in that moment, those who had nothing more to live for than to take what others had and what others wanted and what those had never gotten to have stood in confusion, and suddenly they were the ones on their knees, begging for some explanation as to how they could possibly save face in the eyes of the world that had moved on without them, to a place of self-dignity and the preservation of the hope we had so desperately clung to even before the world was listening.

Mu isamaa on minu arm,

Ja tahan puhata.

Su rüppe heidan unele,

Mu püha Eestimaa.

Su rüppe heidan unele,

Mu püha Eestimaa.

Land of my fathers, land that I love,

I want to have a rest.

I will lie down in your lap for eternal sleep,

My holy Estonia.

I will lie down in your lap for eternal sleep,

My holy Estonia.

After that day, we three, the brothers of the Baltic Sea, we did not falter. Our voices grew louder, and we stood together—no, all of us, as we had on that August day as our hearts were connected by the hands of the people. We would not be silenced. From the first day my voice had rung out in the quiet, oh so quiet halls of the Soviet Union, none of us could be silenced. Finally, the world was changing, had changed, and we had fought our own way to become a part of it where otherwise we would be left to suffer alone as we had for so long. Lithuania and Latvia and I, Estonia—we were no longer the slaves of the greater Soviets, the Nazis, any other party who thought they could trample us down because we refused to fight.

No, we refused to fight, not because we weren't strong enough, but because we were. We needed no swords, no guns, no bombs to earn our freedom.

We needed only our voices.

Su linnud und mull' laulavad,

Mu põrmust lilled õitsetad,

Mu isamaa,

Mu isamaa.

Your birds are singing me to sleep,

Flowers are blooming from me,

Land of my fathers,

Land of my fathers.