HAS THE IRON CURTAIN RETURNED? 1/4: 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
🗓️ 29 December 2024
⏱️ 11 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.
1882 BUCHAREST
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| 1:00.9 | This is CBS Eye on the World with John Batchelor. Here's John Batchelor. It is July 6th, 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. |
| 1:30.2 | One man more important than any other is Gorbachev. |
| 1:34.8 | Gorbachev is now the head of the Soviet Union, |
| 1:38.2 | and he's also a man who's supervising the Warsaw Pact. |
| 1:43.1 | Warsaw Pact is made up of countries such as Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, |
| 1:50.8 | and most importantly, Hungary. |
| 1:52.6 | Because also in that room is a man named Nemet, a very young prime minister born 1948, |
| 1:59.7 | for what is also in the room the leaders of other countries |
| 2:03.6 | in the Warsaw Pact. A man named Cherchescu, the absolute dictator of Romania, is pounding |
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