1/4 The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain Hardcover by Matthew Longo (Auth
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2023
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
1/4 The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain Hardcover by Matthew Longo (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Picnic-Dream-Freedom-Collapse-Curtain/dp/0393540774/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists organized a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria. But this was not an ordinary picnic―it was located on the dangerous militarized frontier known as the Iron Curtain. Tacit permission from the highest state authorities could be revoked at any moment. On wisps of rumor, thousands of East German “vacationers” packed Hungarian campgrounds, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The Pan-European Picnic set the stage for the greatest border breach in Cold War history: hundreds crossed from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West.
Drawing on dozens of original interviews―including Hungarian activists and border guards, East German refugees, Stasi secret police, and the last Communist prime minister of Hungary―Matthew Longo tells a gripping and revelatory tale of the unraveling of the Iron Curtain and the birth of a new world order. Just a few months after the Picnic, the Berlin Wall fell, and the freedom for which the activists and refugees had abandoned their homes, risked imprisonment, sacrificed jobs, family, and friends, was suddenly available to everyone. But were they really free? And why, three decades since the Iron Curtain was torn down, have so many sought once again to build walls?
Cinematically told, The Picnic recovers a time when it seemed possible for the world to change. With insight and panache, Longo explores the opportunities taken―and the opportunities we failed to take―in that pivotal moment
1957 Hungarian-Austrian Border
Transcript
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| 0:37.6 | is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor. |
| 0:39.4 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:48.0 | It is July 6, 1989, the last meeting of the Warsaw Pact. In the room are significant figures of the Soviet domination of Central Europe, the Soviet ambition to take over Europe in the room. |
| 1:01.6 | One man more important than any other is Gorbachev. |
| 1:05.0 | Gorbachev is now the head of the Soviet Union and he's also a man who's |
| 1:11.0 | who's supervising the Warsaw Pact. Warsaw Pact is made up of countries such |
| 1:16.5 | as Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and most importantly |
| 1:22.4 | Hungary because also in that room is a man named |
| 1:25.8 | Nemeth, a very young prime minister born in 1948 for what is also in the room, the leaders of other countries in the Warsaw Pact. |
| 1:35.0 | A man named Chartescu, the absolute dictator of Romania, |
| 1:40.0 | is pounding the table and yelling at Nemeth, yelling at him, accusing him of betray |
| 1:47.0 | the socialism of the Warsaw Pact, accusing him of undermining the power that they possessed to protect their people from the predatory |
| 1:56.5 | capitalists across the iron curtain. |
| 1:59.7 | Telling this story is Matthew Longo, assistant professor of political science at Leiden University. |
| 2:07.0 | The book is The Picnic, a dream of freedom and the collapse of the iron curtain but we begin with the villains in the room |
| 2:18.2 | Matthew a congratulations this is a brilliant telling of a story I had no knowledge of. |
| 2:24.0 | Who is Nemeth? |
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