HAS THE IRON CURTAIN RETURNED? 4/4: 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
⏱️ 6 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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelors, Professor Matthew Longo. |
| 0:07.6 | His new book is The Picnic, a Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain. |
| 0:12.7 | 30 years later, there's a celebration for that moment of August 19, 1989. |
| 0:18.0 | What's happened immediately after in domino fashion. The Iron Curtain countries fall. |
| 0:26.0 | The Berlin Wall, which is everybody's memory, is November, early November that year. Gorbachev hangs |
| 0:32.7 | on for a little bit longer, but the Soviet Union dissolves at the end of 1991. |
| 0:39.1 | It is now 30 years later, and our intrepid professor, scribe, researcher, Matthew Longo, |
| 0:46.2 | is visiting who remains, Nemeth for one, Agnes for another, who remains to remember. |
| 0:52.5 | And Lazzo Innes, the man who is the curator of documents |
| 0:59.6 | from that moment, and led Matt first to the border. So I'm interested to go to the border with Matt |
| 1:05.5 | today to the spot itself and what does it look like? The one thing, and this is a perverse irony of the Iron Curtain, so for so many decades, |
| 1:16.1 | the Iron Curtain was an area where there was no development, that all there ever was |
| 1:20.1 | was fencing and landmines and so, but there was never any kind of industry and there was no |
| 1:24.6 | settlements, that now the Iron Curtain is the most green |
| 1:28.2 | part of Europe. In fact, for a lot of it, it's now a big green zone. It's called a green belt |
| 1:32.8 | because it's just essentially woodlands. In Hungary, when you go to the site, what you see |
| 1:38.8 | is the overgrown woods. The very woods, the East Germans tried to pass through, this incredibly scary, dark |
| 1:46.7 | wood at night when they're fleeing, essentially armed guards, now is just this beautiful |
| 1:52.0 | pastoral space, its hills, its pastures, its trees, but it also has no sense of carrying |
| 1:59.8 | this mark of history. |
| 2:14.3 | And so Laslo has this profound way of referring to it as Anus Mundi, is how he describes it, this place that's completely unremarkable and hidden into the bushlands between states in the peripheries. |
| 2:19.4 | You would never know that it held this powerful story of not just the party, but again, all these people's lives risked and some taken, right, and some killed |
... |
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