The Defenders of the TV tower
August 1991 also had its heroes in Estonia. In 2009, on the anniversary of August the 20th, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves referred in his speech to the thousands of fellow citizens who were prepared to walk bare-handed against an enemy equipped with heavy weaponry. But he underlined in particular the services of four men, who had defended the Tallinn TV tower. The four defenders were Peeter Milli, Jaanus Kokk, Uno Kaseväli and Jüri Joost.
What was heroic about their action? Their heroism showed in their resolve not to surrender the communication centre on the 22nd floor, which maintained Estonia’s links with the outside world, to the paratroopers who had occupied the rest of the Tower. They knew perfectly well that the defence of the TV tower in Lithuania had left many dead. “I never believed that we would come down from the TV tower on our own feet,” Jüri Joost has said.
Igor Lukas, the chief of the ultra-short-wave section, has this to say about the defenders: “We ascended the tower and I showed them the room on the 22nd floor. The guys told me that they had been sent to defend the tower in case of an attack. But there was also a secret staircase leading to the 22nd floor. I said to the men that the assault would probably come from the roof top and through the windows… I was sorry for these boys because it was certain that if the troopers attacked, they would have been killed, as simple as that. They would have been the obvious victims and there was no chance to defend them! I thought: “Oh boys, you are brave!”
The siege of the TV tower ended as late as the evening of 21 August, when the failure of the coup had become certain in the USSR. “The Russian soldiers were all right in the sense that after all was over they shook our hands,” remembers Peeter Milli. “We all had orders from our superiors.”
- Estonian SSR
- Latvian SSR
- Lithuanian SSR
- Russian SSR
- Byelorussian SSR
- Ukrainian SSR
- People´s Republic of Poland
- German Democratic Republic
- Czechoslovak Socialist Republic
- People's Republic of Hungary
- Socialist Republic of Romania
- Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
- The Moldavian SSR
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