In this conversation with RevDem editor Ferenc Laczó, Matthew Longo – author of the new book The Picnic. A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain – discusses what motivated him to research the Pan-European Picnic of 1989; why he places such an emphasis on the uncertainty of the situation in those crucial days; and what conclusions he has drawn regarding the meaning of freedom in 1989 – and how that meaning has changed since.

Matthew Longo is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University.

The Picnic. A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain has been published by W.W. Norton &Company.

In collaboration with Lucie Hunter.