Anne Applebaum – Anne Applebaum

This Is How Reaganism and Thatcherism End

February 10, 2020 February 22, 2020 / The Atlantic Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

This article was updated at 10:17 ET on February 10, 2020 In an Italian hotel ballroom of spectacular opulence—on red velvet chairs, beneath glittering crystal chandeliers and a stained-glass ceiling—the conservative movement that once inspired people across Europe, built bridges across the Iron Curtain and helped to win the Cold War came, finally, to an …

This Is How Reaganism and Thatcherism End

Brexit Reveals a Whole New Set of Political Wounds

January 29, 2020 February 22, 2020 / The Atlantic Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

FRANCISCO SECO / AP IMAGES One evening last week, I found myself dining in the House of Lords just as the “European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill”—the law that will finalize Brexit—was wending its way through the final stages of the British legislative process. When I arrived, the debate was paused; at suppertime, formally speaking, the …

Brexit Reveals a Whole New Set of Political Wounds

The Disturbing Campaign Against Poland’s Judges

January 28, 2020 January 28, 2020 / The Atlantic Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

Anek Skarzynski / AFP / Getty Last summer, a very unusual scandal unfolded in Poland—or rather, a very ordinary scandal, but with some unusual protagonists. A journalist at a Polish news website, Onet.pl, exposed the existence of an organized online trolling campaign designed to discredit public figures. An everyday occurrence, of course. Except that this …

The Disturbing Campaign Against Poland’s Judges

Putin’s Big Lie

January 5, 2020 February 22, 2020 / The Atlantic Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

In the opening scene of the most famous Polish movie of the past two decades, a crowd of anxious, desperate people—on foot, riding bikes, leading horses, carrying bundles—walks onto a bridge. To their immense surprise, they see another group of anxious, desperate people heading toward them, walking from the opposite direction. “People, what are you …

Putin’s Big Lie

The False Romance of Russia

December 12, 2019 February 22, 2020 / The Atlantic Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

JERRY COOKE / CORBIS VIA GETTY Sherwood Eddy was a prominent American missionary as well as that now rare thing, a Christian socialist. In the 1920s and ’30s, he made more than a dozen trips to the Soviet Union. He was not blind to the problems of the U.S.S.R., but he also found much to …

The False Romance of Russia

Boris Johnson isn’t the cause of Britain’s unseriousness. He’s the product of it.

June 28, 2019 June 29, 2019 / Recent Articles, The Washington Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

“The Tories, in their terror, have elevated a cavorting charlatan to the steps of Downing Street.” Those are the words of Sir Max Hastings, writing in the Guardian on June 24. Hastings is the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, the conservative British newspaper that has loyally backed the Tory party for generations. Like many other …

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Putin’s attack on Western values was familiar. The American reaction was not.

June 28, 2019 June 29, 2019 / Recent Articles, The Washington Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

Russian scorn for liberal democracy has a long history, and a certain kind of Russian disdain for the West is nothing new. As far back as 1920, Lenin declared that parliaments were “historically obsolete” and predicted that it was just a matter of time before they disappeared. In 1956, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev famously …

Putin’s attack on Western values was familiar. The American reaction was not. Read More »

Unlearning the lessons from Chernobyl

June 21, 2019 June 29, 2019 / Recent Articles, The Washington Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

Five years after the Chernobyl disaster, in the summer of 1991, the last summer the Soviet Union was still in existence, I visited Ukraine. I trekked out to the 20-mile exclusion zone — it had been cleared of all people after the accident — together with some local environmental activists. We brought Geiger counters, which …

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Want to secretly, legally send money to Jared Kushner? Here’s how to do it.

June 13, 2019 June 29, 2019 / Recent Articles, The Washington Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

Imagine there was a completely secret, perfectly legal way to bribe a government official. Well, let’s not say “bribe”: Let’s imagine that you could channel money to this official — large amounts of money — and never have to reveal your name. Imagine that this official could accept this money, and then use it to …

Want to secretly, legally send money to Jared Kushner? Here’s how to do it. Read More »

If someone like Trump had been president in 1944, D-Day never would have happened

June 7, 2019 June 29, 2019 / Recent Articles, The Washington Post Column / By Anne Applebaum

I spent part of the D-Day anniversary this year in London — not at the celebration in Portsmouth, England, but at the Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI) annual Land Warfare Conference, an equally fitting venue. There were no heads of state, no veterans, no ships; this was, instead, a modern incarnation of the alliance that …

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