Estonia

Estonia, officially the republic, is the Baltic country of northern Europe on the Gulf of Finland, with Tallinn as its capital and Tartu as its second city, speaking a Finnic tongue. Inhabited since 9,000 BC and one of the last pagan lands of Europe, it passed under Danes, Germans, Swedes and Russians, and a distinct national identity rose with the Age of Awakening in the mid-nineteenth century, when Estonians took over their German-run towns. The Declaration of Independence came in 1918, and the republic stayed democratic through most of the interwar years, declaring neutrality at the outbreak of war. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939 put Estonia in the Soviet sphere, and in June 1940 Moscow blockaded, occupied and annexed it. From the war to 1991 the de jure continuity lived on through diplomats and an exile government, and the Singing Revolution of 1988 to 1990 restored full independence on 20 August 1991.