FLIGHT FROM THE DIMWITTED: 3/4: The Picnic:A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 September 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
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.
BERLIN 1967
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Every year, thousands of students go on their first holiday abroad. |
| 0:05.0 | Our 5G roaming in 80 countries means they're connected as soon as they land. |
| 0:10.0 | Just to remind you to wear sunscreen love because you're as pale as a ghost. |
| 0:14.0 | Oh and can you send me all your friends numbers because their mothers are on to me and always keep your cash in your bumbag. |
| 0:18.0 | Every connection counts, which is why Ireland can count on our network, |
| 0:22.0 | Votaphone, together we can. |
| 0:25.5 | Subject to coverage availability, limitations and terms apply, |
| 0:27.9 | see Vodafone. |
| 0:28.6 | I.e. This is a |
| 0:38.0 | CVS I on the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Matthew Matthew Longo. His new book is The Picnic, a dream of freedom in the collapse of the iron curtain. |
| 0:44.5 | The masters of Central Europe, the Warsaw Pact, are not present. |
| 0:48.7 | We're going to a campsite called Ferto-Rachish. |
| 0:52.0 | It's on the edge of a lake that extends from Czechoslovakia and also reaches |
| 0:59.4 | into Austria. This is the borderlands between Hungary and freedom. |
| 1:05.0 | The town nearby is Sofron, and the gathering at the campsite are people from Czechoslovakia from Hungary and the East Germany |
| 1:16.4 | known as the GDR those are the most important of all because they are the most |
| 1:22.1 | oppressed of all they've passed through Czechoslovakia |
| 1:25.8 | and camped at this place for a celebration that is to take place August 19th. It is the night |
| 1:32.1 | before. It is August 19th. It is the night before. It is August 18th. |
| 1:34.0 | Matt, what is the expectation of the next day when everybody gathers for the party? |
| 1:40.0 | So it's a particularly fraught moment. In the government, in the halls of power in Budapest, you have people sitting by the phones, terrified that the Soviets are going to move. Someone is going to shut everything down. |
| 1:53.7 | All the organizers are terrified, so much so that Maria, who had been on the phone with the |
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