The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain

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Author :
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393540782
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (935 download)

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

Download or read book The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain written by Matthew Longo and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2023-11-07 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping story of a collective passion for freedom that shook the world. 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.

PICNIC

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Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781529920987
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (29 download)

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Book Synopsis PICNIC by : MATTHEW. LONGO

Download or read book PICNIC written by MATTHEW. LONGO and published by . This book was released on 2025 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Picnic at the Iron Curtain

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Author :
Publisher : Delfryn Publishing and Consulting Incorporated
ISBN 13 : 9780987966407
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (664 download)

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Book Synopsis Picnic at the Iron Curtain by : Susan Viets

Download or read book Picnic at the Iron Curtain written by Susan Viets and published by Delfryn Publishing and Consulting Incorporated. This book was released on 2012 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on diaries, reporting notebooks, letters and memory, the author, a student turned journalist, tells of her adventures in Europe within a ten-year period (1988 to 1998) which included major historical and political change in countries such as Budapest, Bishkek, Chornobyl and Chechnya. She finishes her stories with an eyewitness account of Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004.

Iron Curtain

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Author :
Publisher : Anchor
ISBN 13 : 0385536437
Total Pages : 803 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (855 download)

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Book Synopsis Iron Curtain by : Anne Applebaum

Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Anne Applebaum and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 803 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long-awaited follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.

Nature and the Iron Curtain

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Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN 13 : 0822986485
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis Nature and the Iron Curtain by : Astrid Mignon Kirchhof

Download or read book Nature and the Iron Curtain written by Astrid Mignon Kirchhof and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 2019-03-12 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Nature and the Iron Curtain, the authors contrast communist and capitalist countries with respect to their environmental politics in the context of the Cold War. Its chapters draw from archives across Europe and the U.S. to present new perspectives on the origins and evolution of modern environmentalism on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The book explores similarities and differences among several nations with different economies and political systems, and highlights connections between environmental movements in Eastern and Western Europe.

Prelude to Demolishing the Iron Curtain

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9789632365428
Total Pages : 130 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (654 download)

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Book Synopsis Prelude to Demolishing the Iron Curtain by : György Gyarmati

Download or read book Prelude to Demolishing the Iron Curtain written by György Gyarmati and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Gaming the Iron Curtain

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026254928X
Total Pages : 401 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Gaming the Iron Curtain by : Jaroslav Svelch

Download or read book Gaming the Iron Curtain written by Jaroslav Svelch and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2023-09-19 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Aside from the exceptional history of Tetris, very little is known about gaming culture behind the Iron Curtain. But despite the scarcity of home computers and the absence of hardware and software markets, Czechoslovakia hosted a remarkably active DIY microcomputer scene in the 1980s, producing more than two hundred games that were by turns creative, inventive, and politically subversive. In Gaming the Iron Curtain, Jaroslav Švelch offers the first social history of gaming and game design in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the first book-length treatment of computer gaming in any country of the Soviet bloc. Švelch describes how amateur programmers in 1980s Czechoslovakia discovered games as a medium, using them not only for entertainment but also as a means of self-expression. Sheltered in state-supported computer clubs, local programmers fashioned games into a medium of expression that, unlike television or the press, was neither regulated nor censored. In the final years of Communist rule, Czechoslovak programmers were among the first in the world to make activist games about current political events, anticipating trends observed decades later in independent or experimental titles. Drawing from extensive interviews as well as political, economic, and social history, Gaming the Iron Curtain tells a compelling tale of gaming the system, introducing us to individuals who used their ingenuity to be active, be creative, and be heard.

Our Supreme Task

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Publisher : Public Affairs
ISBN 13 : 1610390598
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Our Supreme Task by : Philip White

Download or read book Our Supreme Task written by Philip White and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides the dramatic history of Winston Churchill's 1946 trip to Fulton, Missouri, where he delivered his Iron Curtain Speech--a speech which served to fundamentally define the dangers of Soviet totalitarian Communism.

West Germany and the Iron Curtain

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Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0190690054
Total Pages : 445 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis West Germany and the Iron Curtain by : Astrid M. Eckert

Download or read book West Germany and the Iron Curtain written by Astrid M. Eckert and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: West Germany and the Iron Curtain takes a fresh look at the history of the Federal Republic and the German re-unification process from the spatial perspective of the West German borderlands that emerged along the volatile inter-German border after 1945. The book is the first environmental history of the Iron Curtain.

Iron Curtain

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Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191622842
Total Pages : 540 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (916 download)

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Book Synopsis Iron Curtain by : Patrick Wright

Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Patrick Wright and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-10-29 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. . .' With these words Winston Churchill famously warned the world in a now legendary speech given in Fulton, Missouri, on March 5, 1946. Launched as an evocative metaphor, the 'Iron Curtain' quickly became a brutal reality in the Cold War between Capitalist West and Communist East. Not surprisingly, for many years, people on both sides of the division have assumed that the story of the Iron Curtain began with Churchill's 1946 speech. In this fascinating investigation, Patrick Wright shows that this was decidedly not the case. Starting with its original use to describe an anti-fire device fitted into theatres, Iron Curtain tells the story of how the term evolved into such a powerful metaphor and the myriad ways in which it shaped the world for decades before the onset of the Cold War. Along the way, it offers fascinating perspectives on a rich array of historical characters and developments, from the lofty aspirations and disappointed fate of early twentieth century internationalists, through the topsy-turvy experiences of the first travellers to Soviet Russia, to the theatricalization of modern politics and international relations. And, as Wright poignantly suggests, the term captures a particular way of thinking about the world that long pre-dates the Cold War - and did not disappear with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain

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Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 380 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain by : Jim Willis

Download or read book Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain written by Jim Willis and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-01-24 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This compelling book describes how everyday people courageously survived under repressive Communist regimes until the voices and actions of rebellious individuals resulted in the fall of the Iron Curtain in Europe. Part of Greenwood's Daily Life through History series, Daily Life behind the Iron Curtain enables today's generations to understand what it was like for those living in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, particularly the period from 1961 to 1989, the era during which these people-East Germans in particular-lived in the imposing shadow of the Berlin Wall. An introductory chapter discusses the Russian Revolution, the end of World War II, and the establishment of the Socialist state, clarifying the reasons for the construction of the Berlin Wall. Many historical anecdotes bring these past experiences to life, covering all aspects of life behind the Iron Curtain, including separation of families and the effects on family life, diet, rationing, media, clothing and trends, strict travel restrictions, defection attempts, and the evolving political climate. The final chapter describes Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin wall and the slow assimilation of East into West, and examines Europe after Communism.

New Media Behind the Iron Curtain

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9788382201994
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (19 download)

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Book Synopsis New Media Behind the Iron Curtain by : Piotr Sitarski

Download or read book New Media Behind the Iron Curtain written by Piotr Sitarski and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Iron Curtain

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Publisher : Infobase Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0791078329
Total Pages : 173 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Iron Curtain by : Bruce L. Brager

Download or read book The Iron Curtain written by Bruce L. Brager and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Visiting Central Europe, in 1962, a visitor would not see a real "Iron Curtain." There was no huge piece of grim drapery splitting Europe between Communist dictatorships and democracies. The Iron Curtain represented the Central European part of the Cold War, the generally peaceful, but highly dangerous, forty-year competition between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union and its allies. The Iron Curtain symbolically represented the attempt to permanently, artificially, and arbitrarily split one part of Central Europe from the other. Although there was no real iron curtain, there was lots of steel in the form of barbed wire, ground radar, watchtowers, and machine guns in the hands of troops willing to use them. The boundary between democracy and totalitarianism was clear. This book tells the story of the Iron Curtain, and the Cold War it so vividly represented, from the start of World War II to its end with the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Book jacket.

Iron Curtain

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Author :
Publisher : Signal
ISBN 13 : 0771007647
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Iron Curtain by : Anne Applebaum

Download or read book Iron Curtain written by Anne Applebaum and published by Signal. This book was released on 2013-08-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the long-awaited National Book Award--shortlisted follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize--winning Gulag, acclaimed journalist Anne Applebaum delivers a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Central Europe after WW II and transformed in frightening fashion the individuals who came under its sway. At the end of WW II, the Soviet Union, to its surprise and delight, found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Central Europe. It set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely new political and moral system: Communism. Iron Curtain describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created, and what daily life was like once they were completed. Applebaum draws on newly opened European archives and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief, rendered worthless their every qualification, and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality and strange aethestics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of this book.

Polio Across the Iron Curtain

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Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108420842
Total Pages : 267 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (84 download)

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Book Synopsis Polio Across the Iron Curtain by : Dóra Vargha

Download or read book Polio Across the Iron Curtain written by Dóra Vargha and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-11 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the lens of polio, Dóra Vargha looks anew at international health, communism and Cold War politics. This title is also available as Open Access.

Window Shopping Through the Iron Curtain

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Publisher : National Geographic Books
ISBN 13 : 0500252114
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Window Shopping Through the Iron Curtain by : David Hlynsky

Download or read book Window Shopping Through the Iron Curtain written by David Hlynsky and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A deadpan celebration of the unique commercial aesthetic that flourished under the crumbling totalitarian Communist regimes of twentieth-century Europe Window-Shopping through the Iron Curtain presents a selection of more than 100 images of shop windows shot by David Hlynsky during four trips taken between 1986 and 1990 to Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Moscow. Using a Hasselblad camera, Hlynsky captured the slow, routine moments of daily life on the streets and in the shop windows of crumbling Communist countries. The resulting images could be still-lifes representing the intersection of a Communist ideology and a consumerist, Capitalist tool—the shop window—with the consumer stuck in the middle. Devoid of overt branding or calculated seduction, the shop windows were typically adorned with traditional yet incongruous symbols of cheer: homey lace curtains, paper flowers, painted butterflies, and pictures of happy children. Some windows were humble in their simple offerings of loaves and tinned fishes; others were zanily artistic, as in the modular display of military shirts in a Moscow storefront; and some illustrated intense professional pride, such as a sign in a Prague beauty salon depicting a pedicurist smiling fiendishly over an imperfect sole. The photographs are accompanied by essays by art historian Martha Langford and cultural studies specialist Jody Berland, as well as Hlynsky’s own account of his time as a flâneur in the shopping plazas of the collapsing Soviet empire—“a vast ad-hoc museum of a failing utopia” that in 1989 began to close forever.

The Genius Under the Table

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Publisher : Candlewick Press
ISBN 13 : 1536222348
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (362 download)

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Book Synopsis The Genius Under the Table by : Eugene Yelchin

Download or read book The Genius Under the Table written by Eugene Yelchin and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Honor Winner With a masterful mix of comic timing and disarming poignancy, Newbery Honoree Eugene Yelchin offers a memoir of growing up in Cold War Russia. Drama, family secrets, and a KGB spy in his own kitchen! How will Yevgeny ever fulfill his parents’ dream that he become a national hero when he doesn’t even have his own room? He’s not a star athlete or a legendary ballet dancer. In the tiny apartment he shares with his Baryshnikov-obsessed mother, poetry-loving father, continually outraged grandmother, and safely talented brother, all Yevgeny has is his little pencil, the underside of a massive table, and the doodles that could change everything. With equal amounts charm and solemnity, award-winning author and artist Eugene Yelchin recounts in hilarious detail his childhood in Cold War Russia as a young boy desperate to understand his place in his family.