Anne Applebaum
Author of Gulag: A History
About the Author
Anne Applebaum is a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Washington Post.
Works by Anne Applebaum
Associated Works
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Parts I-II (1973) — Foreword, some editions — 6,015 copies, 48 reviews
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Parts III-IV (1974) — Foreword, some editions — 1,939 copies, 12 reviews
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Parts V-VII (1976) — Foreword, some editions — 1,171 copies, 9 reviews
The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: Parts I-VII (Complete) (1990) — Foreword, some editions — 319 copies, 2 reviews
The American Crisis: What Went Wrong. How We Recover. (2020) — Afterword, some editions — 72 copies, 1 review
From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States (2006) — Introduction, some editions — 41 copies, 1 review
World Monuments: 50 Irreplaceable Sites to Discover, Explore, and Champion (2015) — Contributor. — 20 copies
Our Brave New World: Essays on the Impact of September 11 (Hoover Institution Press Publication) (2002) — Contributor — 6 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Applebaum, Anne
- Legal name
- Sikorska, Anne Elizabeth
- Birthdate
- 1964-07-25
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Yale University (BA | 1986)
London School of Economics (MA|1987)
University of Oxford (St Antony's College) - Occupations
- historian
writer
journalist - Organizations
- Slate (Editorialiste)
Washington Post (Editorialiste)
The Economist (Correspondante Varsovie)
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
Agora Institute - Awards and honors
- George Herbert Walker Bush/Axel Springer Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin
Charles Douglas-Home Memorial Trust Award (1992)
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction (2004)
Cundill Prize (2013)
Duke of Westminster's Medal for Military Literature (2013)
Lionel Gelber Prize (2018) (show all 7)
Marshall Scholar - Relationships
- Sikorski, Radek (husband)
- Short biography
- Anne Applebaum attended Yale University and won a Marshall Scholarship to study at the London School of Economics and Oxford University. She moved to Warsaw in 1988 to work for The Economist, providing valuable first-hand reportage on important social and political transitions in Eastern Europe before and after the fall of Communism and the end of the Berlin Wall in 1989. She has been a reporter and editor for the Evening Standard and the Spectator, as well as writing for many other publications, and formerly served as an editorial board member of the Washington Post.
She is also Director of Political Studies at the Legatum Institute in London, where she runs projects on political and economic transition. Her second book, Gulag: A History (2003), was awarded the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. Applebaum speaks English, French, Polish and Russian. She is married to Radoslaw Sikorski, a Polish politician and writer and the couple has two sons. In 2005, her husband served as Minister of Defense of the Polish government. - Nationality
- USA (Birth)
Poland - Birthplace
- Washington, District of Columbia, USA
- Places of residence
- Washington, D.C., USA
London, England, UK
Warsaw, Poland - Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
"Sometimes the point isn't to make people believe a lie; it's to make people fear the liar."
When Autocracy, Inc. first came out last Summer, I went to hear Anne Applebaum give a book talk. I found her analysis convincing and frightening. The book has been on my shelf since then, and the onset of the Trump/Musk regime motivated me to revisit her arguments.
According to Applebaum, an interconnected network of autocratic regimes in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and Turkey show more (Autocracy, Inc) work together to undermine liberal democracy. These regimes have little in common ideologically, but they share resources to keep each other afloat. They trade weapons, surveillance technologies, and scarce minerals while laundering each other's money.
To maintain power, they " deprive citizens of influence or public voice, push back against transparency and accountability, and repress anyone who challenges them." These regimes consistently use social media to work to shift the narrative by demeaning democracy and the Declaration of Human Rights and portray themselves as engaging in " a battle against the West's imposition of globalist values and decadent cultural mores like LGBTQ rights."
Applebaum offers a detailed account of the rise of Autocracy Inc. and their means of maintaining power. In the epilogue, she describes how the US and other democracies can work together to counter Autocracy Inc. While she does not anticipate Trump's capitulation to Putin on Ukraine, she states:
" In 2023, Trump began talking about using the Department
Justice to arrest his enemies, not because they are guilty
of something, but because if he returns to the Presidency,
he wants 'retribution.' If he ever succeeds in directing
federal courts and law enforcement at his enemies in
combination with a mass-trolling campaign, then the
blending of democratic and autocratic worlds will be
complete."
After the last few weeks, I feel anything is possible. Autocracy Inc. provides timely insights into the Populist threat. I highly recommend it. show less
When Autocracy, Inc. first came out last Summer, I went to hear Anne Applebaum give a book talk. I found her analysis convincing and frightening. The book has been on my shelf since then, and the onset of the Trump/Musk regime motivated me to revisit her arguments.
According to Applebaum, an interconnected network of autocratic regimes in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Cuba, and Turkey show more (Autocracy, Inc) work together to undermine liberal democracy. These regimes have little in common ideologically, but they share resources to keep each other afloat. They trade weapons, surveillance technologies, and scarce minerals while laundering each other's money.
To maintain power, they " deprive citizens of influence or public voice, push back against transparency and accountability, and repress anyone who challenges them." These regimes consistently use social media to work to shift the narrative by demeaning democracy and the Declaration of Human Rights and portray themselves as engaging in " a battle against the West's imposition of globalist values and decadent cultural mores like LGBTQ rights."
Applebaum offers a detailed account of the rise of Autocracy Inc. and their means of maintaining power. In the epilogue, she describes how the US and other democracies can work together to counter Autocracy Inc. While she does not anticipate Trump's capitulation to Putin on Ukraine, she states:
" In 2023, Trump began talking about using the Department
Justice to arrest his enemies, not because they are guilty
of something, but because if he returns to the Presidency,
he wants 'retribution.' If he ever succeeds in directing
federal courts and law enforcement at his enemies in
combination with a mass-trolling campaign, then the
blending of democratic and autocratic worlds will be
complete."
After the last few weeks, I feel anything is possible. Autocracy Inc. provides timely insights into the Populist threat. I highly recommend it. show less
A fascinating and unsettling book on a period in history that has been much more widely discussed in recent months since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: the Holodomor, the famine which ravaged Ukraine in the early 1930s and which killed millions. Anne Applebaum traces its origins back to the 1910s and argues that the famine was the result of a deliberate Soviet policy aimed at resource extraction from Ukraine while suppressing Ukrainian national sentiment and cultural identity as much as show more possible. She draws extensively on memoirs and contemporary records to show the devastating impact that the famine had on the Ukrainian peasantry, and this is not a book to read if you have a weak stomach. Applebaum’s political sympathies are clearly centre-right, but I found myself broadly in agreement with her that Stalin’s attitude towards Ukrainians—a mix of indifference, malice, and paranoia—coupled with institutional incompetence were the determinative factors behind what happened.
The Holodomor is an important topic in its own right, but even though Red Famine was published about five years ago, its contemporary resonances are painfully obvious, with Putin clearly drawing freely from Stalin’s playbook. show less
The Holodomor is an important topic in its own right, but even though Red Famine was published about five years ago, its contemporary resonances are painfully obvious, with Putin clearly drawing freely from Stalin’s playbook. show less
“A world in which autocracies work together to stay in power, work together to promote their system, and work together to damage democracies is not some distant dystopia. That world is the one we are living in right now.”
An essential read to understand what's wrong with the world right now. It's nice to read a well-written summary that even offers a few very good ideas, but can they be realized? Greed, corruption, kleptocracy is feeding autocracy and the very wealthy are not interested show more to change the system. They are actively lobbying against a more transparent financial system and the regulation of social media.
I loved the dedication "For the optimists," but I doubt reading this book helped my optimism, quite the contrary. show less
An essential read to understand what's wrong with the world right now. It's nice to read a well-written summary that even offers a few very good ideas, but can they be realized? Greed, corruption, kleptocracy is feeding autocracy and the very wealthy are not interested show more to change the system. They are actively lobbying against a more transparent financial system and the regulation of social media.
I loved the dedication "For the optimists," but I doubt reading this book helped my optimism, quite the contrary. show less
I was probably looking for something a bit more scholarly when I picked this one up, but I can still recommend this brief, readable, and well-timed book. Anne Applebaum seems to have been in exactly the right time and in exactly the right place to tell the story of how conservatives in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States lost the plot after the Cold War ended, resorting to populist strategies and giving into latent xenophobic urges. Although she doesn't name every show more participant she mentions here, the author is to be commended for at least naming a few names. As one of this book's alternate subtitles suggests, publishing this one probably cost Applebaum a few friends, though, despite that, she also writes that she has expanded her network in ways that would have once surprised her and feels at least some hope for the future.
As for the ideas that I found interesting on a personal level, Applebaum convincingly argues that the illiberal Right is more of a coordinated movement than a lot of people would assume. I was one of those people that considered David Frum's "Axis of Evil" speech a bit of a reach, to put it mildly; "Twilight of Democracy" makes it seem somewhat more plausible. She also usefully defines nostalgia that is merely personal or aesthetic -- which is generally harmless -- and what she calls "restorative nostalgia," which seems actively seeks to bring back political situations that have already been consigned to history. Her analysis of how this phenomenon connects with the British drive for Brexit is especially interesting. So although this book wasn't what I was expecting, I'll recommend it: it's bracing, intelligent, and, deeply felt. I don't think many books that I've read about politics have been worthy of those three particular adjectives. show less
As for the ideas that I found interesting on a personal level, Applebaum convincingly argues that the illiberal Right is more of a coordinated movement than a lot of people would assume. I was one of those people that considered David Frum's "Axis of Evil" speech a bit of a reach, to put it mildly; "Twilight of Democracy" makes it seem somewhat more plausible. She also usefully defines nostalgia that is merely personal or aesthetic -- which is generally harmless -- and what she calls "restorative nostalgia," which seems actively seeks to bring back political situations that have already been consigned to history. Her analysis of how this phenomenon connects with the British drive for Brexit is especially interesting. So although this book wasn't what I was expecting, I'll recommend it: it's bracing, intelligent, and, deeply felt. I don't think many books that I've read about politics have been worthy of those three particular adjectives. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 14
- Also by
- 15
- Members
- 8,137
- Popularity
- #2,973
- Rating
- 4.2
- Reviews
- 157
- ISBNs
- 231
- Languages
- 22
- Favorited
- 13
