A historian of Soviet and Eastern European memory
De-Stalinization after the Twentieth Congress took “two steps forward, then one step back.”
Anne Applebaum is an American historian and journalist whose work examines communism, authoritarianism, and civil society in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Gulag: A History reconstructed the camp system from the Revolution to its collapse through archival research and testimony, winning the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In Iron Curtain and Red Famine, she explored the Sovietization of postwar Eastern Europe and the Ukrainian famine, arguing that the Twentieth Congress made de-Stalinization a movement of both release and renewed control.
Career Timeline
- 1986B.A. in history and literature, Yale University
- 1987M.Sc. in international relations, London School of Economics
- 1988–1991Warsaw correspondent and Eastern Europe reporter, The Economist
- 1992–1996Foreign editor and deputy editor, The Spectator, later political editor, Evening Standard
- 2002–2006Editorial board member, The Washington Post
- 2003–2004Published Gulag: A History and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
- 2011–2016Founded and directed the Transitions Forum at the Legatum Institute
- 2020–현재Staff writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University's SNF Agora Institute