The leading site within the park is the Kumu Art Museum,
Estonia's striking National Gallery,
opened with pride and fanfare in 2006.
While Estonian art evolved in step with the rest of Europe,
it was also shaped along the way by the nation's history.
For instance, 19th-century Romanticism
was the artistic style of Estonia's
aristocratic German landlords who enjoyed art
featuring idyllic Estonian peasant women
in folk costumes and idealized settings.
Local artists continued to paint
in sync with European styles, from Impressionism
through Cubism and so on.
But Estonian art parted ways with Western Europe
after the Soviet takeover in 1945
which brought the end of artistic freedom.
The Soviets insisted on one kind of art --
social realism.
This was beyond censorship.
Art had to actively promote the Communist struggle.
The Estonian Artists Union was forced to renounce
individual expression and be re-educated.
The Stalinist formula -- "national in style
but socialist in content."
Painters produced themes like this,
titled, "Excellent Young Communist Workers."
Industry was celebrated.
Mining was big in Estonia,
so miners were portrayed as heroes,
marching like soldiers to their glorious work.
Soviet women were shown not as the idyllic cliche
of traditional motherhood but as strong laborers,
working side by side with men.
They were entirely engaged in the quest
to reach the communist ideal.
Here, a woman oversees
the bolstering of agricultural production.
Posters were a natural fit for social realism.
They could be mass-produced.
They generally came with a proclamation.
This one reads, "it's good to work hard
and buy government bonds."
And they carried the propaganda message
to every corner of society.
In the 1960s, things began to change.
Many Estonian artists took a more independent
and avant garde approach,
injecting hints of social commentary into their work.
This angered Khrushchev,
and many of these artists ended up in Siberia.
But as the Soviets would eventually learn,
change was unstoppable.
Western ideals began to infiltrate.
Estonia was the only part of the U.S.S.R.
Where pop art was recognized.
Painters featured utopian scenes
viewed through the eyes of alienated urbanites.
Artists flirted with the psychedelic
as a new generation came of age.
Nearby is the stage from where the people of Estonia
gathered to demand their independence.
The song festival grounds,
which hosts massive choral festivals,
is a uniquely Estonian institution.
This is a national monument because of
the stirring role it played
in Estonia's fight for independence.
With only a million people,
lodged between Russia and Germany,
and without a strong military,
Estonians asserted themselves with song.
[ Singing in Estonian ]
They say being together and singing together
was their power.
300,000 Estonians gathering here to sing together.
Yeah, one day in 1988,
1/3 of Estonian nation gathered here to sing,
to sing about the freedom, about the independence,
to show to the rest of the world
and especially to the Soviet side that
we are tired to be one part of the Soviet system,
and, as we can see now, almost 20 years later,
that it was successful.
Steves: Tallinn's Museum of the Occupation
rounds out the story.
Suitcases are a reminder of people who fled the country,
leaving everything behind.
Displays show how Russians
managed to keep the Estonians in line.
Surveillance was a part of daily life.
Prison doors evoke the countless lives lost in detention
and deportation.
And the Communist leaders who once lorded over
the Estonian people are now
in the basement guarding the toilets.