Despite the fact I remember watching the Berlin wall fall on TV I did not know it was a picnic that started it. When a new fledgling political party got together to discuss what they could do to gain some freedom someone suggested a picnic some scoffed and others stared into space but one woman who had grown up having to hide what they listen to on the radio and having a passion for rebellion said she would help organize it and this is how the picnic was born with people from Hungary and from Germany all getting together peacefully and just wanting freedom and it would only end win the wall eventually came down three weeks later. On August 17, 1989 Germany became a whole country and True neighbors with Hungry and although they still have their issues today with Germany welcoming refugees of war in Hungary putting up a fence to keep them out of Europe at least those who live there have more freedom before 19 89, Hungary didn’t even allow private citizens to have a telephone and and now they even have cell phones. so things are improving. it seems no matter where you look in the world you tend to always find someone actively hating someone else so any of these moments of success with people getting their freedom should always be celebrated. This was a great book that came from a great idea Matthew Longo did a good job writing this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it to any history fan. It’s just sad we don’t all evolve at the same time because if we did then maybe we could all live peacefully or at the very least no one would be fearing death from another. I want to thank the author the publisher and net galley for my free Ark copy please forgive any mistakes as I am blind.

The popular history of the end of cold war prominently features the opening and dismantling of the Berlin Wall. In Matthew Longo's The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain the political realities of 1989 behind the Iron Curtain are unraveled from their apparent appearance of longevity and permanence to the actual limits of authoritarianism and the chain of unexpected consequences.

The central event of the book was the organizing and holding of the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989. Under Gorbachev's leadership of the Soviet Union, borders and measures were loosening, in Hungary, a group of activists took a big risk to organize a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria, along the highly militarized border between the Free West and Soviet East.

While these activists were at work gaining permissions and preparing the physical arrangements, many East Germans were looking for ways out of their repressive police state. The Stasi (East German Secret Police) knew everything possible, where people lived, their hobbies and habits. Information gained from spying, tapping phones, stalking and photography and interrogations. East Germans were able to vacation, and many of them journeyed to the Hungarian countryside where they could still be followed and observed by the Stasi. This singular event is detailed through the words of the activists, governmental figures and East Germans who used it as their opportunity to gain freedom.

Longo builds the narrative from extensive direct interviews with participants, witnesses and figures of authority as well as journalistic, academic and narrative accounts of 1989. He also drew from works of political philosophy, especially Hannah Arendt, and literature from east Germans and Hungarians. These are all weaved together masterfully, allowing the narrative to unfold mostly chronologically, heightening the tensions as it remains unclear if the picnic would take place as at any moment it could've been halted.

A highly readable account of the events of a pivotal time in modern history. The Picnic shows the power of people organized and willing to take risks, the shocking speed of change, and how our identities and nationalities are constructed and maintained. While Longo centers the events on August 1989, he also details the lives of those caught up in the title event and how it shaped the rest of their lives. Some found freedom and new lives others found themselves back home mere months later but still refugees of a country that no longer existed.

Recommended reading for those interested in history, politics or the societal costs and adjustments of change.

Extraordinary explanation of both political and social/emotional reactions and reasons for opening the Berlin Wall.

As an American, the knowledge I had of the Berlin Wall was very limited. I remember seeing it televised and being told it had come about due to President Ronald Reagan’s speech to Gorbachev. The Picnic debunks that claim.

It was a very engrossing read that not only explains how the picnic came about and ended in the wall being breached that day but also stories from people who were there.

I was intrigued to learn how hard it was to set up the picnic. It’s amazing that it even happened! But my favorite part of the book were the firsthand accounts of the people who lived in the east and were able to cross to the west. Each story blew my mind! I can’t imagine living like they did. And the desire to obtain their freedom was palpable.

I was also enlightened by Matthew Longo’s discussion about freedom and how people understand it to mean different things. It’s something I’ve taken for granted and have never thought deeply about until now.

The Picnic is not a textbook retelling of the Berlin Wall’s breach but an emotionally packed story of the people that lived through it!

I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn about the Berlin Wall and people that initiated its removal.

Many thanks to Matthew Longo and W. W. Norton & Company for the ARC via NetGalley!!!

Anybody who was an adult at the time remembers the astonishing fall of the Berlin Wall and the (relatively) quick collapse of communist regimes throughout eastern Europe. But of course those events didn’t just happen; they were preceded by years of resistance to authoritarianism. In the late 1980s, there was a sense in Hungary, in particular, that this particular section of the Iron Curtain was being taken down. Since travel within the Warsaw Pact countries was generally permitted, more and more residents of the GDR, in particular, traveled to Hungary—ostensibly for vacation—in hopes of being able to escape to Austria.

Hungarian political activists had the idea in the summer of 1989 to put on a Pan-European Picnic; an outdoor gathering at a bucolic area on the border between Hungary and Austria, where the fence would be removed so that all attendees could mingle. Astonishingly, they were able to obtain the needed permissions and organize within just a few weeks. Publicity was a challenge, though, and it was mostly word of mouth that brought East Germans to the picnic site, rather than to the usual spot for vacationers, Lake Balaton. In the days before the official picnic, many campers were helped to cross the border by friendly locals, particularly the lady who ran the concession stand. And on the day of the picnic, hundreds of East Germans fled en masse. Less than three months later, the Wall fell.

Longo presents the story of the organizers of the picnic and several of the East Germans who escaped that day. It’s fascinating to read about the various personalities, their lives and their motivations. I hadn’t previously known that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was a political activist in 1989 and called for the end of communism and for Soviet troops to leave the country. Though he was far from the only activist, his speech gained him great fame and led to his political ascendancy. It’s sadly ironic that he has become an autocrat himself and has developed a close relationship with Vladimir Putin. He favored democracy and aid to refugees in 1989, but now that he is in power, he rejects western-style democracy and is virulently anti-immigrant and against aid to refugees. Longo doesn’t focus on Orbán as intensely as I may be making it sound. Instead, he focuses on the individual activists most involved in the picnic, and the handful of couples and families who escaped that day. This is history at the ground level, and it’s fascinating.