Jüri Mikk

Jüri Mikk
Estonia Estonia 1948–2010 ○ Died

MRP-AEG co-founder who warned of demographic threat and answered the slander campaign with a hunger strike

'I have a conscience, and that is why I am here, speaking under its pressure. We cannot go on living like this. We are becoming a minority on our own land.'

In August 1987 he co-founded the MRP-AEG with Lagle Parek and Tiit Madisson, and at the Hirvepark rally warned that Estonians were 'becoming a minority on our own land.' After the rally he began a two-month hunger strike to protest the official media's slander campaign; in the midst of it he carried a placard onto Red Square demanding publication of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and was forcibly sent back to Estonia. He later served as a delegate to the Congress of Estonia and was an editor of the satirical paper Roosa Lipp.

Activities and affiliations

Career Timeline

Related historical events

Target of the slander campaign and the continuation of protest in 1988

Immediately after the Hirvepark rally the authorities mounted a propaganda offensive against its participants. On 24 August 1987 the bureau of the Estonian Communist Party Central Committee condemned the gathering as "nationalist and anti-Soviet" and ordered counter-propaganda measures, and the Estonian Telegraph Agency (ETA) and the central press poured out articles portraying the organizers as thieves, swindlers and provocateurs who distorted history. The figures singled out for the sharpest personal attacks were Jüri Mikk and Lagle Parek. Tiit Madisson, Jan Kõrb and later Heiki Ahonen were ultimately forced out of the country, but Mikk stayed in Estonia and remained at the front of the campaign.

Mikk was also among the most active organizers of demonstrations in 1988. The "calendar protests" led by the MRP-AEG commemorated key dates in Estonian history, three of them within a short span: 2 February in Tartu for the anniversary of the Treaty of Tartu, 24 February in Tallinn for the anniversary of the Estonian Republic's independence, and 25 March in Tallinn for the anniversary of the March 1949 deportations. The authorities prepared in advance, kept organizers in an information vacuum, refused permits for the planned actions and resorted where necessary to summons under the guise of being "invited for coffee," threats and reservist call-ups. The demonstrations went ahead nonetheless. In this period Mikk also took part in pickets demanding the release of the political prisoners Mart Niklus and Enn Tarto and in public-letter campaigns addressed to the Soviet and Estonian authorities; his name on the open letter to Gorbachev of 31 August 1987 shows that he did not stop his open protests after the rally speech.

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