In the heat of the dawn of the Second World War, the Baltic republics signed a defence and mutual aid pact with the Soviet Union. When the conflict reached its peak, the Baltic territories were disputed between the Nazi bloc and the iron curtain. After six years and a day of war, the Allies declared themselves winners and with it, the USSR annexed the territories of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
It took 50 years until on 22 August 1989, when the population tired of living in a country where voices were not echoed and the colour of ideas faded in the face of oppression, decided to carry out an action that attracted the attention of world public opinion; more than one million people held hands, making a human chain that traveled 600 km across the three countries.
With the eyes of the world watching, in 1991 a conservative socialist bloc tried to curb the policies of perestroika and in a coup d’ état, they took Moscow trying to stop economic reforms. Three military columns were dispatched to Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to take control of the communication units that kept the Baltic connected to the western world.
Estonian civilians carried out the defense movement of the TV tower in Tallinn. Courageously armed, they used matchboxes to block the elevators that gave access to the tower. With the army at the gate and tanks at the base of the tower, the situation almost reached a critical point but it was announced that the coup d’ état had failed, with a busy Moscow and a nationalist sentiment filling the heart, the Supreme Council of Estonia declared that they would once again be an independent nation.
In the TV Tower, the military disappeared but the tanks were disposed of by the Estonians. In commemoration, a tank was left on the 314-metre skirt of the TV tower, as a silent witness to the liberated nation. For the Mextonia Festival several Estonian children stormed the tank in an attack full of color and joy, claiming the right to forge their own reality and build their future in a nation where fr