Anne Applebaum
Anne Elizabeth Applebaum[2][3] (born July 25, 1964) is an American and naturalized-Polish journalist and historian. She has written extensively about the history of Communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.
Anne Applebaum
- United States
- Poland
Writing on Soviet Union and its satellite countries
2
Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction
She has worked at The Economist and The Spectator,[4] and was a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post (2002–2006).[5] Applebaum won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 2004 for Gulag: A History published the previous year.[6] She is a staff writer for The Atlantic[7] and a senior fellow at The Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.[8]
Early life and education[edit]
Applebaum was born in Washington, D.C.,[2] the eldest of three daughters of Harvey M. and Elizabeth Applebaum. He father, a Yale alumnus, is senior counsel at Covington & Burling's Antitrust and International Trade Practices. Her mother is a program coordinator at the Corcoran Gallery of Art. According to Applebaum, her great-grandparents immigrated to America during the reign of Alexander III of Russia from what is now Belarus.[9] Applebaum has stated that she was brought up in a "very reform" Jewish family.[10] After attending the Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C., Applebaum entered Yale University, where during the Fall 1982 semester she studied Soviet history under Wolfgang Leonhard.[11] As an undergraduate, she spent the summer of 1985 in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), an experience she credits with helping shape her opinions.[12] Applebaum received her BA from Yale in 1986 summa cum laude, in history and literature,[13][11] and was the recipient of a two-year Marshall Scholarship at the London School of Economics, where she earned a master's degree in international relations (1987).[14] She also studied at St Antony's College, Oxford, before becoming a correspondent for The Economist and moving to Warsaw, Poland, in 1988.[15]
In November 1989, Applebaum drove from Warsaw to Berlin to report on the collapse of the Berlin Wall.[16]
Affiliations[edit]
Applebaum is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.[70] She is on the board of the National Endowment for Democracy and Renew Democracy Initiative.[71][72] She was a member of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's international board of directors.[73] She was a Senior Adjunct Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) where she co-led a major initiative aimed at countering Russian disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).[74] She was on the editorial board for The American Interest[75] and the Journal of Democracy.[76]
Personal life[edit]
In 1992, Applebaum married Radosław Sikorski, who later served as Poland's Defence Minister, Foreign Minister, Marshal of the Sejm, and a member of the European Parliament. Since 2023, he serves again as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The couple have two sons, Aleksander and Tadeusz.[77] She became a Polish citizen in 2013.[78] She speaks Polish and Russian in addition to English.[79]
