Day of Declaration of Sovereignty (Suveräänsuse päev) on November 16 honors the historic 1988 resolution wherein Estonia became the very first Soviet republic to declare sovereignty from Moscow, sparking the Singing Revolution and the eventual collapse of the USSR.
On November 16, 1988, amidst Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of glasnost and perestroika, the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR convened in Tallinn and voted overwhelmingly (258 to 1) to adopt the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration (Suveräänsusdeklaratsioon). The declaration asserted the historical continuity of the pre-1940 Republic of Estonia and established that Estonian laws held supremacy over Soviet federal laws within Estonian territory. Although the Kremlin in Moscow declared the resolution null and void, Estonia's courageous defiance initiated the 'parade of sovereignties' across Lithuania, Latvia, and other Soviet republics. Accompanied by the nonviolent Singing Revolution, in which hundreds of thousands sang forbidden national hymns at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds, this declaration set in motion the legal and moral chain reaction that dismantled the totalitarian Soviet empire and culminated in the full restoration of Estonian independence on August 20, 1991.
