Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum is an American journalist, historian, and author known for her extensive work on Eastern Europe and global politics. She is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Senior Fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
Anne has authored several acclaimed history books, including Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction; Iron Curtain, which explores the Sovietization of Eastern Europe and won the 2013 Cundill Prize for Historical Literature; and Red Famine, which examines the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine and its connection to modern-day Russian-Ukrainian tensions. In 2020, she published the bestselling Twilight of Democracy, which delves into the appeal of autocracy among Western intellectuals and politicians.
Her most recent book, Autocracy, Inc. (published in July 2024), investigates the network of authoritarian regimes — including Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe — that collaborate to maintain power and challenge democracy worldwide.
Anne has reported on Eastern Europe and Russia since 1989, when she covered the fall of communism in Poland for The Economist. Her work has also appeared in numerous American and British publications, and she previously served as a columnist for The Washington Post and deputy editor of The Spectator.
Born in Washington, D.C., to a reform Jewish family, Anne traces her roots to Belarus, where her great-grandparents emigrated from during the reign of Alexander III of Russia. She holds dual U.S. and Polish citizenship and resides in both Poland and the United States with her husband, Polish politician and writer Radoslaw Sikorski.
