Exhibit Opening: The Baltic Way: History and Culture in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 1918–2018

The Baltic Way: History and Culture in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania 1918–2018

Stanford Libraries is pleased to present The Baltic Way in partnership with the Hoover Institution Library & Archives. Using photographs, posters, correspondence, and other documents paired with narrative text, the exhibit attempts to explain the complicated history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the twentieth century, and considers their prospects and challenges in the twenty-first. The exhibit’s title commemorates the 1989 Baltic Way protest, in which people in all three countries linked hands to demand independence from the USSR. The protest took place on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the agreement between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that ended the first period of independence of the Baltic republics. The Baltic Way also celebrates the three countries’ uniquely Baltic cultural heritage.

The exhibit, which will run through August 18, 2018, was co-curated by Liisi Esse, Associate Curator for Estonian and Baltic Studies, and David Jacobs, longtime Hoover Institution Archives project archivist, and produced by Special Collections exhibits designer Becky Fischbach. Katrīna Kalniņa and Natasha Porfirenko assisted with research and item selection.