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yes to start. Or tap the banner

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to go to monday.com. Welcome

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to the New Books Network. Hello,

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this is Lily Gorin with the New Books

0:37

Network, the New Books and Political Science podcast.

0:40

Today I'm joined by Matthew Longo, who

0:42

is the author of The Picnic, A

0:44

Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of

0:46

the Iron Curtain. This was published in

0:49

2024 by W.W. Norton, and

0:51

it is a lovely read, a beautifully

0:54

written book, that

0:56

talks all about the end of the

0:58

Cold War, the reality

1:00

and a porousness

1:03

of the Iron Curtain, and

1:05

so much else, including a discussion of

1:07

freedom. So I'm going to

1:10

let Matthew tell us all about that, but I

1:12

want to start out by asking Matthew

1:14

to tell us a little bit about himself

1:17

and how he came to this particular project.

1:19

Hi, Matt. Hi, thank

1:21

you. It's really nice to be back,

1:23

in fact, on your podcast. So

1:27

this project, I guess like everybody

1:29

in your audience who is as nerdy as

1:31

I am, as I presume is most of

1:33

your audience, understands

1:35

that a lot of our ideas come from conferences.

1:38

And I've made this point to non-academic audiences, and

1:40

they all find it kind of funny. I actually

1:42

think that you will totally identify with what I'm

1:44

about to say. I was at a conference

1:48

in theory, in practice giving a talk on

1:50

the U.S.-Mexico border. It

1:52

is a borders conference, and

1:56

maybe it is as geeky as you'd hope, maybe it's more

1:58

geeky than you'd hope, but I'm going to do it. our

2:01

border conference is often take place at borders. This

2:04

particular conference took place half in

2:06

Budapest, half in Vienna. Didn't

2:09

matter, it was just a place. I was very happy to spend

2:11

time in these cities, but our

2:13

protocol in the Association of Borderland

2:15

Studies, which I'm part of, is

2:19

to take a day in the middle to go

2:21

to the border. And it could be

2:23

a field trip in a researchy way, or it could just

2:25

be a nice day out in the sun, or

2:28

so forth. I was there. As

2:32

I said, I worked on U.S. Mexico. I never thought

2:34

about Hungary or Austria, anything like

2:36

that. And, but

2:38

I was there at the border, and I met

2:40

this guy named Laszlo, and he

2:43

told me a story about what had

2:45

happened in 89. And I

2:47

had thought, as a border geek, I

2:49

had heard every great story

2:51

about borders, at least every great story that

2:54

pertains to like, the Cold War, the Western

2:56

world. I understand that not, of course, not

2:58

every border. But

3:00

a story like this, with such

3:02

obvious ramifications for geopolitics, and it

3:05

floored me that I had never heard

3:07

it. And so I

3:10

left thinking like, okay, well, maybe

3:12

Laszlo was just kind of overstating it

3:14

a little bit. Maybe this is the

3:16

guy, he's in the sixties. He

3:18

really liked regaling his battle days

3:21

in the Hungarian pro-democracy

3:25

revolutionary movement. I

3:27

kind of thought, okay, let's take this with a slight grain of

3:30

salt. But you know, then I read

3:32

into it, and the story kind of got more real

3:34

and got more interesting. And I,

3:37

a couple days later, because I

3:39

got in his email, I wrote

3:41

to him, which is a question, which is I

3:43

had to know if the people were

3:45

still alive, because

3:47

I'm not a historian, and a

3:50

lot of my work involves interviews and

3:53

ethnographic work. And I really like the idea of

3:55

doing a project in memory of

3:58

30 years earlier is very attractive. But

4:00

only if I could really talk to and meet these people.

4:03

And not only do they exist, he wrote back like, yeah, of

4:06

course, you know, they all live around the corner. Who do you

4:08

want to know? Oh, you'll meet everyone. And

4:10

so it kind of started off that way.

4:12

So there I was, I back out on

4:14

the Garret border led, you know, six weeks

4:16

later, meeting all these 60 something ex

4:19

democracy activists and getting their

4:21

their tales. And

4:24

you populate this book with all

4:26

of them so that the book

4:29

is really wonderful in terms of

4:31

getting a sense of who all these

4:33

people were. You tell the stories through

4:36

their perspectives in so many ways.

4:40

And it is like your previous

4:42

work, very much an ethnographic study.

4:46

But also like your previous work, it

4:48

gets into the sort of thorny dimensions

4:51

of what a border

4:53

actually is and how

4:56

it works, which is what

4:58

I really found so fascinating about your previous

5:00

book. And having

5:03

lived through 1989, I was I was really captured

5:05

by the story that I too did not

5:11

know anything about. So

5:14

before we get into all these questions of

5:16

borders and freedom and all of that good

5:18

stuff, tell us about the picnic. Sure.

5:21

So I also remember 89 very strongly. And

5:23

I remember the fall of the Berlin Wall.

5:27

And it's not just you and I that did not

5:29

know the story. I will be in I live now

5:31

in Europe, I teach at Leiden in Holland. And

5:35

the number of times I will meet people who

5:37

are older than myself, who lived

5:39

in Europe, who were news reading age,

5:42

and they didn't even know the story. It

5:44

really, no, it's quite a special thing. I

5:46

think in general, with history, these

5:48

events that are adjacent to the more famous

5:50

event often get lost, right? So everybody remembers

5:52

the fall of the Berlin Wall. This

5:55

moment, the fact that it's precipitative makes

5:58

it interesting. But in the big. telling,

6:00

you know, everybody remembers the event and all the

6:02

other stuff filters away. So what is

6:04

the picnic? So you have to imagine in your

6:06

mind, you travel back in time to the

6:08

80s. This is not just

6:11

the 80s in the West, it is in the East,

6:13

which is even less information. But

6:15

even in the West, I mean, you have to imagine, you know,

6:18

internet and cell phones, right? This

6:20

is a time in which basic information was

6:22

largely centralized. I mean, you got news from

6:24

newspapers that were controlled by conglomerates or big

6:27

powers or, you know, and

6:29

you're now thinking of yourself on the other side,

6:31

the iron curtain, as my characters are in the story.

6:35

There was very little information and you

6:37

then further position yourself not just in

6:39

Hungary in the 80s, but

6:42

way out in the eastern

6:44

part of Hungary in a city called Debitsen, where

6:47

you're a stone throw

6:49

from the Romanian border. But more importantly,

6:51

you're about an hour drive from what

6:53

is now Ukraine, the Ukrainian border, but

6:55

then was little the Soviet Union, right?

6:57

So the Soviet Union ended, you know,

7:01

an hour from your house. And

7:04

these are people for whom, you know, maybe there

7:06

had been some whispers of change and they knew

7:08

who Gorbachev was and things like that. But the

7:10

idea of anything real, of not

7:12

being communist, anything like that was

7:15

unimaginable in their lifetimes. And

7:18

but at the same time, there are people who

7:20

had grown up in late stage, late stage communism,

7:23

who felt their lives

7:25

were stifled. They weren't going anywhere. They were

7:27

not getting jobs. They were not being able

7:29

to hold down houses or marriages

7:31

or do anything with their lives. They were

7:33

young and frustrated and angry. And

7:36

it's exactly this kind of person, you

7:38

know, smart and pissed off that

7:41

are the great, you know, the great engines of

7:43

history. And I meet these people who

7:46

out in the east have this one

7:48

particular wild opportunity to meet the

7:51

man. So Otto von Habsburg, who would be,

7:53

would have been the heir of the Austro-Hungarian

7:55

Empire had it not folded. And

7:58

they meet him for dinner. He comes to give a talk. out

8:00

in Debuttsen. And throughout

8:02

this dinner, and one of these guys, his name

8:04

is Fettens, he

8:06

has this idea. You know what? We

8:08

shouldn't be talking about interesting ideas of

8:10

democracy out here in Debuttsen, but

8:13

also in a fancy

8:15

hotel receiving this scion.

8:17

We should do it some more meaningful. And

8:19

his thought is we should do it at

8:22

the border. But to give an idea of

8:24

what his conception was, he really thought

8:26

the border was like a line in the sand,

8:28

and you can get Austrians on one side and

8:31

Hungarians on the other, and you'd like, I

8:33

don't know, throw sausages back and forth

8:35

or something, or like throw beer across

8:37

the border and have like a bonfire. And that was

8:39

the idea. And it was just

8:42

going to be a big snub your nose to the iron curtain,

8:44

which of course kept them in, right? Because they couldn't travel. And

8:48

it's a completely insane idea that you

8:50

would throw the party, even

8:52

given what they knew. But then

8:55

if you factor what they didn't know, which is that the iron

8:57

curtain wasn't just a line in the sand, that

8:59

it was a often several kilometers

9:02

wide expanse of gun

9:04

towers and even

9:06

mines, nevertheless, soldiers and dogs. I mean, most

9:09

of the mines have been cleared. But

9:11

you know, the word most in that

9:14

sentence is kind of weight bearing, right?

9:16

So it's an incredibly dangerous place, an

9:18

electrified zone of security, let's say. It's

9:22

completely impossible that you could throw

9:24

a party in the iron curtain. And

9:27

yet this was the idea. And these guys start to

9:29

plan it. There's this wonderful moment

9:31

where they start to get, try to get other opposition

9:34

figures interested. And they of course fail,

9:37

except for this one woman who is a

9:40

Maria, she and so she and Feddens are

9:42

basically the nucleus of a team. And

9:44

so you know what, we're just going to do it. Let's just throw

9:47

a party, we'll figure it out. And so

9:49

the first part of the book is trying to map this

9:52

party. Now, part

9:54

of why it could even happen is

9:57

that in addition to the kind of muckraker story, because

10:00

of course I met, as I said, I met Lazlo, who

10:02

was one of these activists. I

10:05

was going to be interested in the democracy promotion side,

10:07

but a lot of it is that you also had

10:09

elites in power. In particular, the

10:11

other figure that I introduced in the story

10:13

is this guy named Miklos Nemeth, who

10:16

was the last prime minister of communist Hungary.

10:20

He was also a reformer and also trying

10:22

to reclaim Hungarian sovereignty.

10:25

For him, getting rid

10:28

of the Iron Curtain, and in

10:30

particular all the militarization that was

10:32

of course Soviet powered and also

10:34

monitored, was

10:36

an ideal for him. It's

10:38

not just that the Hungarian government allowed this

10:41

party to happen, it's that it was also

10:43

trying to dismantle the Iron Curtain at the same

10:45

time, and therefore saw this party

10:47

as like a nice opportunity. Let's

10:50

actually see how far we can go. These

10:52

guys want to throw a party in the borderlands? Let them.

10:55

Let's hope the Soviets don't move on them, but

10:58

if they do, we have a sense of how far we

11:00

can push things. All

11:02

these factors get together, this completely

11:04

insane picnic idea.

11:07

I really can't overstate this. It's

11:09

a party. It is a protest

11:12

created by 20 and 30

11:14

somethings, where the main idea

11:16

was to get a bandstand, play

11:19

music, dance, drink, eat

11:21

goulash, have a great time. As

11:24

long as this is happening in the most politicized place in the

11:27

world, it obviously draws everyone's

11:29

attention, and most importantly it draws the attention of

11:31

all the other people in the East Bloc

11:33

that want to get out, and

11:35

most notably East Germans, because

11:37

anybody who's ever seen a

11:40

movie like The Lives of Others, one of those kinds of

11:42

things, everyone has an idea of how draconian the Stasi were.

11:46

An absolutely brilliant film. Yes, 100%. I've

11:49

also been to the Stasi Museum in...

11:53

Yeah. Yes, right,

11:55

it's incredible. It's a gorgeous film,

11:58

but it just gives you a sense, right? totally

12:01

clamped down East Germany.

12:04

All you hear is that Hungary

12:06

is starting to reform its border

12:08

areas. And here we're

12:10

talking about, at this point, it's really,

12:13

so it's June, it's July, it's August 89, which

12:17

importantly correlates with summer. And

12:19

so East Germans anyways would go to Hungary as they always

12:22

had. Hungary is like a, it's a lot

12:24

warmer. It has

12:26

this beautiful inland lake called

12:28

Lake Balaton. It's not like you could go to

12:30

the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, it's a restricted zone, right?

12:32

But because it's part of the social of East,

12:35

it was an area you could travel to. And

12:39

it's a country known for, you know, good food and good

12:41

wine and all these things. Anyways, there

12:43

were hundreds of thousands of East Germans who would

12:45

anyways be going for vacation. But

12:48

this summer, there's this little extra thing, which

12:50

is that people are hoping or thinking maybe

12:53

they can get out. And

12:55

so this combination of these three

12:57

forces, the Hungarian muckrakers,

13:00

a very willing Hungarian government

13:03

and hundreds of thousands of these Germans

13:05

all end up convening in

13:08

the same place in the borderlands. And

13:11

it leads to basically this big breach, a breach of

13:13

the border, the

13:15

largest in the Iron, Institute Iron Curtain,

13:18

but it quite literally the precipitating event

13:20

that would lead to the fall of the Berlin

13:22

Wall. So much so that

13:25

upon reunification, so

13:28

then West German Chancellor, but now

13:31

unified German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in

13:34

the speech at the Bundestag said

13:37

that it was in Hungary that the first break was knocked

13:39

out of the Berlin Wall, right? So

13:41

it's really a precipitating event, this border

13:43

breach. And

13:46

from the border breach, essentially, which happens

13:48

in August, right? This is August of

13:50

1989. And

13:53

it is a party. It's,

13:55

I mean, that's

13:57

what happened in... in

14:00

this sort of borderland

14:02

space. How

14:05

does that knocking out of the

14:07

first brick move to

14:09

the wall coming down to

14:11

the fall of the

14:14

Czech of Czechoslovakia, you

14:17

know, East Germany, Romania,

14:19

which is another sort of bordering

14:21

area that was even more draconian

14:23

than Hungary and so

14:25

forth? Yeah,

14:28

so the event is August 19th, big

14:30

party. So they were planning on,

14:32

well, they were hoping for a thousand people. I

14:35

think they were fearing it would just be them with like,

14:37

you know, their own beer and no one else. It

14:40

turns out 20,000 people show up. And

14:44

but the actual party is really it's just

14:46

the stage where they set the stage for

14:48

this event. But the event or this the

14:50

breach is we

14:52

don't know an exact figure. We think at

14:54

a low end, about 600 at a higher

14:57

end, maybe a thousand people storm

14:59

the border, the border

15:01

guards who are supposed to be stopping them as they

15:03

had for the entire history of the Iron Curtain. Right.

15:05

This is the most deadly border in

15:07

the world at that time. See

15:11

hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people coming out from

15:13

the side to basically let them

15:15

pass. These

15:18

were not in their words, these were not enemies.

15:20

You know, they had strollers. These are people on

15:22

vacation that are just hoping they

15:24

can get out. And

15:28

within three weeks, so

15:31

from August 19th, 89 to September 11th, which is

15:33

the day that Nemeth,

15:36

this prime minister, says, OK, just open the border

15:38

at that point. Once people are crossing

15:40

illegally because it was in that first event was

15:42

this breach. It was really a rip of the

15:44

curtain. But then that night, hundreds

15:47

more the next day, hundreds more. We're

15:49

talking thousands and thousands and thousands of

15:51

people. They go into the woods and

15:54

you had a particularly, you

15:56

know, the first part of the story is lovely, this

15:58

idea that, you know, there's these benevolent. border guards that

16:00

let these refugees pass and all

16:03

that's lovely but you know two days later someone

16:05

was shot and killed at the border it is

16:07

still a militarized zone you still have some

16:09

border guards who are less keen on this whole

16:12

everything goes willy-nilly thing and

16:16

that really spooks Nemeth you

16:18

know it was okay until there was a death and

16:21

after that Nemeth basically says okay this

16:23

can't happen you can't just have thousands

16:25

of people you can't have border guards

16:27

with guns deciding on their own whether

16:30

to let people cross them and this whole thing is

16:32

not sustainable so three weeks later he just

16:34

opens the border and at that

16:37

point we're talking tens

16:40

of thousands in one day I mean a car

16:42

is full of people are just crossing and crossing

16:44

and crossing and it's open it

16:46

never closes again right so at that point not

16:49

only are the hundreds of thousands

16:52

of these Germans in Hungary all leaving

16:55

but the wall has lost all

16:57

of its meaning it's lost its integrity right the whole

17:00

point of the wall is that

17:02

it was an uncrossable space if you could just cross

17:04

another way it doesn't do anything it's

17:06

lost its power so more or

17:08

less overnight the wall lost

17:10

any kind of significance and what

17:12

they could do was

17:14

try to close its own borders but

17:17

you know East Germany was already falling

17:19

apart and East Germany

17:21

sustained itself in part by allowing

17:24

people these liberties small liberties of

17:26

going on vacation and all

17:29

these things it was considered a

17:31

safety valve for them a pressure valve and

17:34

once you start to close the border and you

17:36

keep people in people

17:38

start protesting and

17:40

so contemporaneously so again September

17:42

11th is a daily big opening in

17:45

early October are the really big rallies you start to

17:47

see in East Germany I mean things you would never

17:49

have imagined in East Germany

17:51

even you know a year earlier two years to forget it

17:53

and there's no way and

17:56

so much so that then actually his German said

17:58

the East German government opens the border again

18:01

to try to

18:03

get people out because they realize it's

18:05

worse to keep people in and have them protest

18:07

and maybe to get the protesters to leave. And

18:10

so within the two months between September

18:12

11th and the Fall of Berlin Wall

18:14

in November, the

18:17

whole logic of the security system

18:19

fell apart. So it is really,

18:21

it is really quite direct. And

18:24

this is, I remember the

18:26

East Germans opening the border

18:29

as an effort to kind of like, oh,

18:31

we'll get all the, you know, the people

18:33

who are making trouble out of

18:35

here and then we'll be good

18:37

again. I have vague recollections of

18:40

that because I thought, and

18:42

that's an interesting approach to...

18:45

Well, it's just the world. They went from

18:47

like, you know, basically... Locking... ...so

18:49

that you need to be like, please get them

18:51

out. Get rid of these protesters

18:53

and we'll be fine again. No, of course it's

18:55

going to fall apart. It was over. It was

18:57

all over. It's just that,

18:59

you know, like anything, sometimes you have

19:01

the pile of hay for a long

19:03

time and it just takes the match. But

19:07

the reason the story is so interesting is

19:10

that this match not only did happen

19:12

in these completely wild circumstances so far

19:14

away, but all the

19:17

interesting things about politics, about freedom

19:19

and authority and about revolution and

19:21

democracy, all these issues come

19:23

to a head in this such a real world

19:25

way that it's really quite,

19:27

it's quite beautiful to have had the experience,

19:30

the pleasure of spending

19:33

years looking into it. I mean, I

19:35

had never had a subject

19:38

that was both so random

19:40

and so important in

19:43

my life. You know, everything else I've ever chosen

19:45

because it was random or because it was important.

19:47

The idea that they were going to overlap is

19:50

serendipitous. And

19:52

that's, I mean, it is sort of the

19:54

tone of your book as well, that there

19:56

is a kind of, it's

19:59

definitely not. sort of

20:01

a traditional scholarly book. I

20:05

mean, it is a scholarly book, but it's

20:07

not in the sort of traditional sense.

20:09

And part of it is, you know,

20:11

it is oral history. And so you

20:13

are using the words of the people

20:15

who actually participated in these

20:17

events to tell the story. But

20:20

as you say, it's kind of a serendipitous

20:22

event. And

20:25

you tell the story in a kind

20:27

of serendipitous way, which

20:29

I found particularly engaging. But,

20:33

you know, this period of time,

20:35

also you have these events

20:38

going on like Tiananmen Square, which

20:40

was also sort of connected to,

20:43

you know, concerns about what

20:45

was going on in Eastern Europe and

20:48

what might happen. So

20:51

you have these global political sort

20:53

of concerns and

20:56

constraints. And then you

20:58

have a picnic that leads

21:01

to borders. I

21:04

mean, you are a border expert. And

21:06

so I wanted to ask you about,

21:08

you know, how do we think about

21:11

this iron curtain border and

21:13

also the events that

21:15

happened to eliminate

21:17

the iron curtain? Yeah.

21:19

So let me say two things. I want to, because

21:21

in the beginning of what you just said before I

21:24

take that second bit about the border, about

21:26

the tone of the book. Yeah.

21:28

It's so important to me in this

21:31

book that it's storytelling because it really

21:33

is kind of, you

21:36

know, we all, you know, you're

21:38

always fighting the last war. I feel like we're all

21:40

always trying to undo the

21:42

damage of our first books or our first projects. I

21:45

decided my first book project not

21:48

to put things in people's voices. I

21:51

did all these interviews. I spent all the time in

21:53

the borderlands and then I just

21:55

filled it like an academic book into

21:58

argument. And it was so important. important

22:00

to me not to do that. That

22:02

I just feel really bad that actually I

22:05

wrote this book that you never you

22:08

never hear the thoughts of

22:10

the border guards you know you don't you don't

22:12

hear their fears and frustrations and all the the

22:15

lexicon of human emotions all that's cut out of

22:17

the book and this book

22:19

I thought okay the only thing I'm certain of is

22:22

that these people are talking themselves I will

22:24

marry it right I will be there's tons

22:26

of arguments in the book that I care

22:28

about and thinkers and all these things but

22:31

it was so important to me that at

22:33

the very least I wasn't gonna ruin that.

22:36

It is in some sense

22:38

it's obviously

22:42

not an academic book because the

22:45

narrative is foregrounded and

22:47

the argument is backgrounded as

22:49

opposed to the formula for the academic

22:51

book even those that use ethnographic or

22:54

interview work is still to foreground

22:56

the argument and filter the narrative into

22:58

the argument so

23:00

methodologically and stylistically the whole book

23:02

is different because the narrative leads

23:06

and but because of that there is always a there's

23:08

always a bit of out of controlness of it right

23:11

like you are following people's stories and

23:14

if you're gonna tell them earnestly you end

23:16

up kind of stuck with their tangents you

23:19

feel a little bit hostage to their

23:22

narrative right the way they want

23:24

to tell the story and this is actually a kind

23:26

of a tension between my

23:29

narrative voice which is always trying to re-anchor the

23:31

story in the direction I want to go in

23:33

terms of the arguments I want to make and

23:35

the narratives which go their own way willy-nilly

23:37

and are completely uncontrollable and

23:40

so what I actually like

23:42

about the book is that

23:45

tension I like the go-between of the

23:48

narrative and the argument but

23:50

yeah that's right it is really meant to be storytelling and

23:53

but on the second point about borders

23:58

not only they all connected so Tiena Tiananmen

24:00

was a really big part of what

24:02

motivated East Germans to literally risk their

24:04

lives because

24:06

Tiananmen was June, early June in

24:09

89 and East Germans read the news

24:13

and it was kind of a trigger moment for

24:15

them because they realized, look, it

24:17

might be risking your life to try

24:19

the borderlands, which is again an insane idea.

24:23

The Iron Curtain was, I mean, we have the

24:25

only equivalent maybe now of the Iron Curtain was

24:27

like the DMZ between Korea, right? This

24:30

kind of like absolutely uncrossable

24:33

no-go zone and you're going to go

24:35

with your children, right?

24:37

Almost all the people, I think if you had kids, it's

24:40

wild that you would do this. But

24:43

then you have to think of it in the bigger picture, which is

24:45

not just that the kids you'd

24:47

be raising in East Germany didn't have

24:50

future prospects, not just in terms

24:52

of freedom also economically, but

24:54

also this feeling, look what just

24:56

happened in China, that's going to happen here. In

24:59

other words, staying was just as risky

25:01

as leaving in their minds. And

25:05

Hanukkah was the East

25:07

German premier responded to

25:09

Tiananmen by saying, basically

25:12

good on China, right? Good on China for getting

25:14

rid of those Western provocateurs

25:16

or whatever insane way of thinking

25:21

about what just happened. And so

25:24

all of these things are connected. That's right.

25:26

And actually this part of the interesting thing

25:28

also to be a little bit introspective about

25:30

the way we understood these ideas in the

25:33

West as an American who

25:35

grew up with this completely Manichean

25:37

view of the world where, you know, it

25:39

was horrible on the side of the curtain

25:41

and the Berlin wall falls and like freedom

25:44

reigns. I had this completely

25:46

simple high school education,

25:48

right? This simple black

25:51

and white high school education

25:53

about what the fall of the Berlin wall signified.

25:57

And me in

25:59

New York. Tiananmen

26:02

Square, some guy

26:04

in an East German farm village, they're

26:07

all part of the same web

26:09

of information, disinformation,

26:11

ideological maneuvers

26:13

by states, by schools. All

26:16

of us were part of the system. And there's

26:19

a way that now, after the

26:21

Cold War, we no longer

26:23

really think in those kind of ideological terms,

26:25

the idea that we were all part of

26:27

the system. But

26:31

I think what's interesting about going back in time is

26:34

that not only do you have to realize how

26:36

much ideology played a role in the 80s and

26:38

in these places, but so does

26:40

it for us. Right. So

26:43

there was an interesting introspective process learning all this, all

26:45

the stuff I didn't know.

26:47

Even Hungary, right? Hungary was a more

26:50

progressive Eastern

26:52

Bloc state, right? East Germany,

26:54

bad guys. Romania, bad

26:56

guys. Hungary was like this slightly

27:00

more liberal economy, slightly more free,

27:03

all these things. We

27:05

would never have learned that in our

27:08

Western education. I never would have learned

27:10

that there was variation behind the Iron

27:12

Curtain, but also variation that

27:14

was actually quite powerful and moving, right?

27:17

It was actually an incredibly

27:19

or at least better functioning version

27:22

of communism with a quasi

27:24

liberalized economy. These kind of

27:26

subtleties were just destroyed in

27:29

my upbringing, my education. And

27:33

so it isn't just Tiananmen and East Germany, it's all

27:35

of us. I think it's all this one big picture.

27:38

And that was really interesting to kind of

27:40

rediscover. Yeah. Yeah. I

27:42

mean, I do remember having I actually

27:45

traveled into Yugoslavia in 86. And

27:50

again, it was like you could go there

27:52

without a whole lot of hassle. And

27:56

it was someplace behind the Iron

27:58

Curtain. But not as you

28:01

say, as bad as Romania, or,

28:04

you know, a lot of the other really

28:07

bad places. And

28:09

that there is, there was subtle differences, particularly by

28:12

the time we get to the 80s. And

28:16

before the curtain falls, that,

28:18

you know, we have the

28:20

more Western facing countries

28:23

that were not as locked down. And we're

28:27

trying to sort of sort their way out

28:29

in a certain sense. And

28:32

I find this, you know, part of

28:34

what you have done in telling these

28:36

stories, or letting the stories be told by their

28:39

narrators, is you,

28:41

you keep also threading together

28:43

the sort of cold

28:47

war mentality with

28:51

the fact that this happened

28:53

30 years ago. Yeah,

28:57

right. And actually, to go back to political science,

28:59

since this is a political science podcast, and a

29:01

lot of our listeners will be political scientists, this

29:04

bit about all the, whenever

29:06

we distill stories into argument, any

29:09

kind of data into argument, what

29:11

you're doing is you're trying to find

29:14

supporting bits of evidence. But

29:16

we know, we all know that we're filtering out

29:18

the complexity of the world, and

29:20

looking for signals amongst the noise and all these

29:22

things. Part of what's

29:24

interesting about storytelling, and again, this is not the

29:26

way I had ever written before, I'd never written,

29:29

certainly my first book was the opposite of this,

29:31

right? You have no experience

29:34

as a reader of my evidence, except

29:36

what I tell you, right? I'm

29:39

the author, I'm the god figure of all

29:41

the information. And I just go into an

29:43

argument. And what's

29:45

so wild about having

29:48

the stories lead is

29:50

not only that it forces you to allow

29:52

the, or lets you allow the reader to

29:55

judge for themselves what they're

29:57

actually interpreting, you might completely disagree.

30:00

with the way I process or narrate this

30:02

material, which I think is actually from

30:05

the position of the author hugely vulnerable. It's

30:07

hugely vulnerable to think that a person can

30:10

read this and go, no, that's not what

30:12

that person meant. I'm

30:14

interpreting what I think they mean. But

30:16

I'm also not just saying what I think they mean.

30:18

I'm giving you what they say. And then I'm saying

30:20

what I think it means. And

30:22

so there's a kind of vulnerability that comes

30:24

from it. But I also think it

30:27

generates a way more interesting and sophisticated

30:29

argument because it

30:31

keeps me out of saying, well, this

30:33

book is going to make one claim

30:36

really well. Actually, it

30:38

ends up leading you towards a book where you're making

30:40

1,000 claims, most of them just

30:42

scatter shot. And then you pull

30:44

out the one or two things you really want to say.

30:47

And you hope that the material supports it

30:50

enough to conclude that. But

30:52

I really like this feeling of this

30:55

mixture of transparency and vulnerability that

30:58

comes from storytelling. I

31:02

have to think a lot more about what

31:04

this means for political science. But I definitely

31:06

leave this feeling like it's

31:08

not just that I've made. It's

31:10

not like the argument is lesser because

31:12

it's second to storytelling. I

31:15

think the argument is better because of the way

31:17

of the storytelling. And that's something that would take me a little

31:19

bit of time to figure out why I think

31:21

that's true. Yeah, I

31:23

mean, and again, I so often think myself

31:26

of politics through narrative. If

31:30

it be somebody explaining

31:32

particular ways that they're thinking about an

31:35

issue or a person, or

31:37

in my case, I really like

31:39

to see the narrative arc of a

31:42

story written or produced by

31:44

somebody that explains or

31:48

shows politics. And

31:51

I think that you're sort of taking

31:53

that in a different way,

31:55

but it's the same context.

31:59

Yeah, and to get... in the

32:01

for full disclosure. So Lili and I have been

32:03

part of a book project in the past on

32:05

the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This is a project that

32:07

Lili led. I just gave a chapter. But

32:10

it's a very similar feeling, which is

32:12

that when you analyze a movie, because

32:15

the movie is public, everybody can see the

32:18

film. And of course, in the chapter,

32:20

you also spell out the film. You

32:22

give the people the terrain on which

32:25

you have the interpretive battle in a form. But

32:28

it's a completely different thing when

32:30

you're dealing with complete public domain

32:33

information and then analyzing

32:35

it versus the way most projects

32:37

happen, which is that the information

32:39

is held in the hands of the researcher,

32:41

even if some of it's made public. Right.

32:46

And again, I think that this helps

32:48

people to understand, because our brains often

32:51

work more effectively, shall we

32:53

say, in capturing

32:56

and consuming narrative than

32:59

looking at sort of legalistic

33:02

arguments or sort

33:04

of general arguments, which

33:08

is reason, obviously. But

33:10

they're both sort of

33:12

presenting arguments in different formats.

33:17

But on that point, so when I've

33:19

looked at reviews of my book, it's

33:21

really interesting how different reviewers, what they

33:23

think the book is about, which

33:26

is the opposite of my first book. My

33:28

first book was about a thing. It made a

33:31

claim. It can be right or wrong. But

33:33

the idea of the question of what is the book about

33:36

would never generate different answers. It

33:39

was a very straightforward argument. Here,

33:41

I'll read a review and I'll think, huh,

33:44

it's really interesting what that person picked up

33:46

as like the essential strain

33:49

for them. And that's also been very

33:51

gratifying. Well,

33:54

you're putting the information out there and letting

33:56

people interpret it on

33:58

their own as well. But

34:02

I did want to bring you

34:04

back a little bit to this

34:06

question that I have because the

34:08

Iron Curtain plays such a giant

34:10

role in our

34:12

thinking about the world, our

34:14

being from the West, from the East, from

34:18

wherever that there

34:20

was this, you know, this very

34:22

clear border. I

34:25

mean, and I've been to

34:27

Berlin, I've seen Check Point

34:29

Charlie, you know,

34:31

which is different than sitting over in Chicago

34:33

and reading about it. But

34:37

it was this place

34:40

in our imagination as well as

34:42

this place actually physically. And one

34:44

of the things that

34:46

you do in your scholarship

34:48

is talk about the sort

34:50

of porousness and mobility of

34:53

borders. So this was

34:56

a little bit less of a

34:58

mobile border, in fact, but

35:00

it was a kind of mobile

35:03

border in our imagination. And

35:06

you and the people you talked to sort of

35:08

talk about that. Yeah,

35:11

the border in the

35:13

Iron Curtain days, and I think this filters to

35:15

this question of information, which is

35:17

that because information was so standardized, and

35:20

the story was so Manichean, the

35:23

border actually was the

35:25

was the site of all these narratives, no one had

35:27

been to the border, no one crossed the border. You

35:30

knew about it in a totally narrativeized

35:32

way. And in particular, it filtered through

35:34

these ideological systems. What

35:37

that means is, whether or not you

35:39

thought the border was keeping people in, or

35:41

protecting you from bad guys, these

35:44

narratives were completely life changing,

35:46

right? You lived in a

35:48

narrative structure that the border played a

35:50

role in. And what happens

35:52

in those kinds of worlds when nobody has any experience the

35:54

border, part of it is just misinformation like you had

35:56

with Fettens out in debit and said the border was just,

35:58

you know, like a fence,

36:01

who just had no information about it. But

36:04

part of it is that once you get this

36:06

kind of mythologized version of it, most

36:08

of the time it's the opposite of the way Fennan saw it.

36:11

It actually gets bigger and bigger. And

36:13

so as it gets bigger and bigger, it gets

36:16

more uncrossable. Remember, no one hears any stories of

36:18

people crossing. All you hear are

36:20

stories of people dying, the ones that

36:22

get reported. Some idiot tries to

36:24

cross the border and gets shot. So

36:27

over the decades, the border in this mythologized

36:29

form gets bigger and bigger like a genie

36:32

coming out of a bottle. And

36:34

so it completely structures the

36:36

worldview of the people. Because

36:38

it's not based on some information of like, you

36:41

could imagine a statistical register. How likely

36:43

is it that any potential border crosser

36:45

would cross this border? You can put

36:47

any border into that matrix. But

36:50

they had no such information. There was no idea

36:53

except the mythologized form. And

36:55

that's what's so fascinating. So in

36:57

particular, in East Germany, what

37:00

I really liked about learning about this border,

37:03

because it was so different than the one I'd studied in

37:05

East Mexico. Because almost

37:07

always, we think of the border

37:09

in terms of its permeability or

37:11

its crossability. And

37:14

on the one hand, East Germany was just a

37:16

different model. Because so when you think of US

37:18

Mexico, the main thing the border is doing is

37:20

keeping people out. The

37:22

idea is that the barbarians are at

37:24

the gate, whether it's Mexicans or terrorists

37:26

or whoever we've, again,

37:28

the mythologized other that we've created as

37:31

being this fear. In

37:33

East Germany, it was the opposite. It was

37:35

literally to keep people in. And everybody knew that. Certainly

37:38

by the 80s, everyone knew that. I mean, maybe not

37:40

in the early 60s. And

37:43

so the functionality is totally different. But

37:46

because we have this mythologization,

37:49

whatever, that's maybe not a great word, that

37:52

when we think of the border, the thing

37:54

we mythologize is the thing being kept out.

37:56

It's all about the barbarians. It's the migrant

37:58

caravan. kind of things

38:00

we talk about, these wild stories that get

38:02

bigger and bigger and more dangerous and all

38:05

these things that we create in our narrative,

38:07

was instrument East Germany, is

38:09

that the thing the border was doing, the

38:11

ideological work of the border, was

38:14

actually strengthening the Stasi.

38:17

So the Stasi and the border

38:19

are not separate institutions without

38:23

the border, right? If you could just

38:25

leave, the Stasi's information gathering has no

38:27

real value or greatly delimited value, if

38:30

you could just leave. But

38:33

the border, because everyone is so

38:35

scared of anything they're talking

38:37

about, of any kind of rumor, you

38:40

would never even go to the border because

38:42

you're scared the Stasi would see you. So

38:45

the lack of information about

38:47

the actual border, the reason it gets

38:49

bigger in your mind, is entirely based

38:51

also on the fact that the Stasi

38:54

and the border play off one another,

38:56

each getting bigger in the other's shadow

38:58

or self-image. And so

39:00

to experience this completely different mythological

39:03

structure of borders, right, keeping people in

39:05

and having information be

39:08

the thing that makes the border bigger, but

39:10

also the border be the thing that makes

39:12

the Stasi valuable, allows

39:14

us then to reflect on our own borders differently

39:17

and ask what kind of ideological work our own borders

39:19

are doing. Because we think we

39:21

live in a world where we can cross

39:24

freely, where the only thing the border is doing is keeping

39:26

out the barbarians. Of course that's not true,

39:29

right? But that's the ideological work of the border,

39:31

to convince you of that fact. Actually,

39:34

borders are internal to America.

39:36

They're not just at the edge of

39:38

Texas or California. We know there

39:40

are different kinds of border regimes throughout the country. Border

39:43

regimes are just as tied to information

39:45

in America as they

39:47

are anywhere else. Moreover,

39:51

the actual differentiating practice

39:54

of the border we think of as being citizen,

39:57

barbarian, right? American, Mexican, whatever.

40:00

He will. You want to cut the apple? The

40:03

idea that actually citizens are distinguished by the

40:05

border. To the poor you are. The darker

40:07

your skin, the more you the more you

40:09

have something shady in your past. Even if

40:12

that shady thing is something incredibly banal like

40:14

you know, you made a phone call to

40:16

Pakistan one day and now that he that

40:18

was it's entered in some data bank or

40:20

whatever. So is all these ways that them

40:23

thought this and the border. Or.

40:25

Anyways place upon of also. It's

40:28

that, whereas in the stasi context,

40:30

it's obvious, For

40:32

a lot of us. In our country isn't

40:34

obvious, and that's what's so interesting about a

40:37

project like this. right? So the

40:39

learning of the one actually teaches you much

40:41

about the other. Yeah

40:43

and and in the United

40:45

States is always sort of

40:47

thought about the movement across

40:49

states as also something that

40:51

the states our borders and

40:53

yet also not borders arm

40:55

and in the current regime

40:57

with regard to abortion access,

40:59

the state borders have now

41:01

become really interesting places. Well

41:05

and to push back on the slightly for

41:07

one of the first papers I ever wrote

41:09

as a little self plug was that. Throughout

41:12

American history, borders have been open or

41:14

could was in the states which are

41:16

mythic state borders with right within the

41:18

puppy have been differentially opened or closed

41:21

based on who you are. It was

41:23

very normal for states to try to

41:25

restrict, in particular the poor. For.

41:27

Moving in because they don't want them claiming

41:29

in a welfare benefits or any kind of

41:32

state benefits. To the

41:34

idea that we had basically defacto systems

41:36

to make it so that again the

41:38

darker skin or the poor you are

41:40

the less likely would across was always

41:42

true. And that's more of a

41:44

spectral concert right? And in degrees of porn

41:47

Us Abortion just makes it obvious because of

41:49

course in some in the state aid legal

41:51

state be it isn't And so because of

41:53

the binary this of abortion laws are the

41:56

more somewhat your is actually different. Proportional

41:58

to from states, but. The fact

42:00

that it feels as though states

42:02

differentiate more clearly in terms of

42:05

abortion. We now see things. That.

42:07

Were always there sir, frightened never

42:09

saw them. That.

42:11

They've now been made clear.

42:13

Arms I mean is is

42:16

famously Of course the The

42:18

Loving Arms Court case where

42:20

that couple that was a

42:22

quote mixed race couple in

42:24

Virginia was thrown out of

42:26

the state of Virginia. Ah,

42:28

and who knew states could

42:30

actually throw you out. Yeah.

42:33

Right right? Exactly what

42:35

deportation we talked about.

42:38

leaving America. The. Idea that

42:40

you might actually be quote unquote, deported of

42:42

is not quite the same word, but from

42:44

a state? Yes, right. And. And

42:46

barred from re entry and and that

42:48

these two individuals had in order to

42:51

visit their family had a sneak back

42:53

into the state of Virginia from Maryland

42:55

in Washington D C. In

42:58

the nineteen fifties. What

43:00

an interesting li the only the and

43:02

we really have for this the not

43:04

for your back to the cinema although

43:06

thing that unites us like guns to

43:08

do this for their arguments but is

43:10

the old western the idea of the

43:12

sheriff would say i don't ever wanna

43:14

see you in his district again there's

43:16

gonna be very normal and westerns have

43:18

and the that like you know. If

43:21

you're the. The. Bad guy and

43:23

years fleeing the sheriff. You know

43:25

enough to do is get to

43:27

state lines and the chef can't

43:29

fall. You have a grocery. Clerks

43:32

right? And so this. Idea that

43:34

like people are differentially admit it

43:36

or not admitted in jurisdictions and

43:38

rules, They were always there. But

43:41

he knows. You know, westerns are kind of

43:44

fun fiction, but when it comes to abortion

43:46

and suddenly not fiction or fun. exactly

43:48

exactly so mat now that you've

43:50

written about the borders in the

43:52

united states and max the cow

43:55

and how they exist in all

43:57

kinds of places any written about

43:59

the i Curtain border, what's

44:02

next on the docket? Oh

44:04

God, I have no

44:07

idea. I really, I

44:09

had, before I ever started

44:11

on the US-Mexico border, I had spent quite a

44:13

long time working on

44:15

travel restrictions in the West Bank. And

44:18

I really thought the natural next

44:20

book project would be to go back to

44:23

the West Bank and look at checkpoints, but

44:25

also the wall between, you know, Israel proper

44:28

and the settlements and the West Bank. And

44:31

so much so that I actually went and procured

44:33

a grant in the

44:36

summer. Before

44:39

October, shall we say. Yeah, October, shall

44:41

we say. And I'm not sure that's going

44:43

to happen. So that

44:45

was the only answer I had, which

44:47

seemed good eight months ago, and now

44:50

doesn't seem like something you'd really hang your hat

44:52

on. So I don't know, I'll

44:54

have to go back to the drawing books. I'm

44:57

not sure about borders though. I really think that one of

44:59

the revelatory bits about this for me is

45:01

actually, whereas my first book really was

45:03

about borders, this was kind

45:05

of halfway or equal between borders

45:08

and migrants and migrants and refugees. And

45:11

I always wanted to move in that direction. I mean,

45:13

since I moved to Leiden,

45:15

I've been teaching a seminar on migration

45:17

and it's obviously related, but I

45:20

don't think I really understood when I started embarking on

45:22

borders, how different the subjects were. And

45:25

since it's like somehow the border and

45:27

the border crosser seem obviously conceptually linked,

45:30

they're kind of not actually, you link and

45:32

you study just the border, you really only

45:35

encounter the border crossing at the moment of

45:37

crossing. And so in

45:39

their whole journey, the whole story of mobilities

45:41

and migration, you really can

45:43

only look at one little instant. And

45:47

so I was quite ignorant of

45:49

migrants and refugees as a subject

45:51

throughout my first book writing process.

45:55

And because this book is obviously

45:57

all about refugee stories, right? I

46:00

found it really moving and interesting and it's

46:03

really taking me in so many different directions

46:05

and so I don't know. I

46:07

mean the idea of talking more about border

46:09

crossing and less about borders I think

46:11

would kind of also be a way that could go. But I don't

46:13

know. Well, I look forward to the next one. Thank you. Okay,

46:16

sounds good. I

46:20

want to thank you Matthew Longo for joining

46:22

me today to talk about The Picnic, A

46:25

Dream of Freedom and the Class of the

46:27

Iron Curtain published by WW Norton in 2024.

46:32

I assume one can buy this at

46:34

the WW Norton website

46:36

and other brick

46:38

and mortar and in bookstores where you

46:40

shop. So

46:44

thank you for joining me today Matt. It's been great to talk

46:46

to you. It's really been a pleasure. Thank you.