On August 23, 1989, as many as two million people formed a human chain connecting Vilnius, Riga, and Tallinn, the capitals of the three republics. If this count is correct, then one in four residents of the region participated in the peaceful protest, called the Baltic Way. The date was the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact that had granted the Baltics to the USSR. These people did not want to secede: they wanted an end to the occupation.
