1941–
The dissident architect who walked out of a Soviet prison camp and opened Estonia's political road to independence
On 23 August 1987 at noon, Hirvepark stood empty until the stroke of twelve, when two to five thousand people suddenly filled it. Parek recalled: 'Unbelievable! Something had to be done.'
The daughter of an Estonian officer, she was deported to Siberia at seven and spent four years in exile. Working as an architect, she was arrested in 1983 for anti-Soviet samizdat activity and imprisoned for four years; seven months after her release she co-founded the MRP-AEG and organised the Hirvepark rally of August 1987. That rally became the starting point of the Baltic independence movement, and the following year she was elected chair of the ERSP, Estonia's first non-communist party. After independence she served as interior minister in the first post-Soviet government, resigning in the 1993 Pullapää crisis, and later converted to Catholicism, living at Pirita Convent while leading the drive to build a memorial to the victims of Stalinism.
Activities and affiliations
- 1988–1992 Political and party leadership
Career Timeline
- 1963–1983Worked as an architect at design institutes in Tallinn and Tartu
- 1983–1987Arrested for anti-Soviet agitation, imprisoned in Dubravlag women's political section
- 1987Co-founded the MRP-AEG, organised the Hirvepark rally
- 1988–1992Chair of the Estonian National Independence Party (ERSP)
- 1990–1992Member of the Congress of Estonia
- 1992Presidential candidate, fourth place with 4.3% of the vote
- 1992–1993Minister of the Interior of Estonia (Mart Laar cabinet)
- 1997–Co-founder and head of Caritas Eesti; resident at Pirita Convent
Related historical events
Post-political civic and religious work: Caritas, the pilgrim route and the memorial
After leaving the interior ministry, the centre of Parek's activity shifted from politics to civic and religious work. According to the Estonian Wikipedia, she adopted Catholicism in the mid-1990s and from 1997 was one of the founders of the charity Caritas Eesti, serving on its board and as its executive director. The English Wikipedia likewise describes her as head of Caritas Eesti, which joined the international Catholic charity confederation Caritas Internationalis.
She also took part in creating a pilgrim route across Estonia. In a 2019 interview with Eesti Kirik, Parek said the idea for a cultural-historical pilgrim trail, offered to the country for its centenary, took shape around 2012. The route runs from Pirita, the site of the medieval convent, to the ruins of the Vastseliina bishop's castle. The interview gives its length as more than 600 kilometres, while several news reports give roughly 400 kilometres, so the figure is recorded here as disputed rather than settled.
The other undertaking she initiated was a memorial to the victims of Stalinism. A text published in Kultuur ja Elu on behalf of the Estonian Memento Union states that the author of the idea for a memorial to the victims of communism was Lagle Parek, a founding member and chair of the ERSP, and that the project rested on victim lists compiled by the Memento Union from its founding meeting on 25 March 1989, with the Estonian Repressed Persons Registry Bureau receiving state funding for the research from 1992.
The memorial was unveiled at Maarjamäe in Tallinn on 23 August 2018, the centenary year of the Republic of Estonia and the Europe-wide day of remembrance for the victims of totalitarian regimes. The same account puts the number of names on its metal plates at more than twenty-two thousand. As the bio notes, she continued this work while living at Pirita Convent, where she has described herself as a friend of the convent rather than a member of the order under a formal title.