Anne Applebaum
The real reason authoritarian populism is on the rise: it’s simple
American-Polish writer Anne Applebaum probes the decline of a just society in the U.S., Britain and Poland in a new book, titled ‘Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism’
How Stalin starved four million Ukrainians to death
Author Anne Applebaum, an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe, says Russia still denies that Holodomor ever happened
The new Bond movie and the new “Iron Curtain” history
There’s something uneven about the new James Bond movie, Skyfall, though not in a bad way, and I think it has to do with the juxtaposition of luxury and austerity. Near the start of the movie, when 007 has dropped out of sight, he’s shown boozing at a low-rent beach bar. Near the end, when he needs to make a final stand, he retreats to a derelict stone manor glowering over the starkest of Scottish countrysides. So the story is bracketed by evidence of Bond’s ultimate need for little or nothing. Yet in between our eyes are treated, of course, to the usual black ties and backless dresses, luxury yachts and elite suites.
“The rule of law, and nothing else, is what makes us exceptional.”
Anne Applebaum wrote the definitive history of the Gulag. She gets that what happened to U.S. detainees wasn’t the Gulag, but neither can she countenance the proposition that its criminal excesses be ignored. Here’s what she has to say.