The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain, by Matthew Longo

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The Picnic by Matthew Longo

The Berlin Wall came down in a televised frenzy, but months earlier, far from the media’s eyes, the Iron Curtain quietly began to unravel. The chain of events began when Hungary’s last Communist prime minister, a reformer named Miklos Nemeth, ordered the removal of the fence separating his country from neutral Austria. It was part of a complicated series of events, whose consequences were mostly unintended, explored in this astute book by Leiden University political science professor Matthew Longo.

“Like so many things, political ideas begin mysteriously and build slowly, almost imperceptibly—until they suddenly seem unstoppable,” Longo writes. The public was restless behind the Iron Curtain and the economic theories that governed the Soviet Bloc felt bankrupt as hardliners and reformers negotiated a treacherous path toward change. But the average person was impatient with changes from above and no longer afraid to demonstrate in the streets. Once the fence came down, Hungarian activists held a picnic at the border to celebrate. They didn’t know that thousands of East German “vacationers” would show up, dreaming of a chance to escape across the open border to the West.

A touch of melancholy hangs over The Picnic. One of the primary Hungarian activists was a young man called Viktor Orban. He is now the country’s autocratic prime minister. The dreams of peace and freedom shared across much of the world as the Cold War ended have awakened to disappointment, if they haven’t entirely succumbed to nightmares.

Get The Picnic at Amazon here.

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