HAS THE IRON CURTAIN RETURNED? 2/4: 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
⏱️ 8 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.
1904 SERBIA CORONATION
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchew with Matthew Longo. The professor is the author of the new book, The Picnic, a dream of freedom in the collapse of the Iron Curtain. It is late June, 1989. Several months have gone by since the meeting with Gorbachev. Prior to the Warsaw Pact meeting, we're in a city, the second most populous city in Hungary, |
| 0:27.9 | I learned, Debritsen. |
| 0:30.3 | Fad Hopsburg is in the room, a man who is part of the European Parliament, but he's |
| 0:34.9 | addressing a gathering of young people in a party that sees itself as |
| 0:39.1 | opposition to the Communist Party dominating conversation. He inspires the people in that room, |
| 0:46.5 | and one of them is Naji. And several days later, people in Debertson will say, we must do something. We must act in a fashion that is consistent with our wish to be free. |
| 1:00.9 | And a young woman named Maria speaks up with a plan, and the plan is to hold a party. |
| 1:08.1 | Help me understand, Matt. I don't know the geography. How far is Debritson from the border? |
| 1:13.8 | And how is it that Maria comes to understand that is the soft place for the party? |
| 1:21.5 | Yeah, fantastic. So we're now in late June, 1989, in Debrezen, right? So these two things that John is referring to this is June |
| 1:29.1 | 20th is the beginning of this idea, and then June 30th starts to form. To understand and to |
| 1:35.5 | appreciate the whole context, one has to completely change their register of thinking. We're no |
| 1:41.3 | longer dealing with elites, right? This is no longer Nemet than Gorbachev and |
| 1:45.2 | Chichescu names that we know, very high-powered political figures. We're now out in the borderlands. |
| 1:51.8 | To give me an idea of where Debrzen is, Debrzen is a, you know, a 20-minute drive from the edge of what |
| 1:57.4 | it was then the Soviet Union, right? So now it's Ukraine. |
| 2:06.0 | It's absolutely at the edge of the Romanian border and the now Ukrainian, then-Soviet border. |
| 2:09.9 | And the people we're talking about are just kids, right? |
| 2:22.5 | I mean, they're either late 20s, let's say, some of even early 30s, but there are people who are young, the two main actress, so Ferenz and Maria, these two figures, begin to hatch this idea that, you know what, we can talk about issues. We can do something radical and strange, |
| 2:28.8 | because they're at a moment of their lives when, in a way, changes all they can look forward to. |
| 2:33.9 | You have to imagine, if you're not an elite living out in a way, changes all they can look forward to. You have to |
| 2:34.3 | imagine if you're not an elite living out in the bush, right, out in the borderlands, you can't |
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