TY  - BOOK
AU  - Longo,Matthew
TI  - The picnic: a dream of freedom and the collapse of the Iron Curtain 
SN  - 9780393540772
PY  - 2023///]
CY  - New York, NY
PB  - W.W. Norton & Company
KW  - Cold War
KW  - Nineteen eighty-nine, A.D
KW  - Communism
KW  - Europe, Eastern
KW  - History
KW  - 20th century
KW  - Social aspects
KW  - Political culture
KW  - Political persecution
KW  - Politics and government
KW  - 1945-1989
KW  - Relations
KW  - Soviet Union
KW  - Hungary
KW  - Social conditions
KW  - Communist countries
N1  - Includes bibliographical references (pages 291-293) and index; Prologue: Freedom's promise -- Part I: Just kids -- Part II: Europe's prison -- Part III: Breach! -- Part IV: The road to Berlin -- Part V: Democracy now -- Epilogue: Freedom's price
N2  - "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?"--; Chronicles and examines the collective passion for freedom that shook the world toward the end of the Cold War
ER  -