Freedom fighter

Anne Applebaum, an American historian living in Warsaw, will be honored with the most famous German literature prize. Her consistently critical stances on Russian hegemony stand out and distinguish her from many Western intellectuals.

Why simple when it is possible complicated?! The highest recognition of German literature in the original is called: "Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels" (Peace Prize of German Booksellers), so something. It can also be translated as the peace prize of the German book trade, although it sounds bad. 

However, the price is, as already said, important. Just look at the list of laureates: Salman Rushdie (2023), Svetlana Aleksijevic (2013), David Grossman (2010), Orhan Pamuk (2005), Jürgen Habermas (2001), Mario Vargas Llosa (1996), Vaclav Havel (1989) .

The 2024 laureate is named Anne Applebaum. She is a well-known American historian who has devoted almost her entire career to the history of Eastern Europe, the Soviet influence in Europe and the fatal role of Stalinism and communism in Eastern European societies. Her four books translated into German speak resoundingly about this. "Gulagu" (2003), "The Iron Curtain - The Oppression of Eastern Europe (1944-1956)" (2013), "The Red Famine - Stalin's War Against Ukraine" (2019) and "The Lure of Authoritarianism - Why Ruled undemocratic so popular” (2021).

What distinguishes Anne Applebaum from many other Western intellectuals is her consistent critical stance against Russian hegemony. While other historians and scholars claimed that with the fall of the Berlin Wall history ended (for example Francis Fukuyama), Applebaum was convinced that the Cold War would continue. That's how it happened.

With Russia's attack against Georgia in 2008, with the invasion of Ukrainian Crimea in 2014, with the attack against all of Ukraine in 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin proved to the world that for him the Cold War has not ended. Putin himself has called the collapse of the Soviet Union the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.

In fact, the collapse of the Soviet Union was a prerequisite for gaining freedom for many peoples in Eastern Europe, from the Baltic countries to Romania and Bulgaria. Most of these countries got rid of communist regimes peacefully – with the exception of Romania, where mass protests broke out in December 1989 and dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena were shot on December 25. 
This epilogue of the Romanian dictatorial couple so frightened the Albanian dictator Ramiz Alia, who after several criminal attempts to keep power, decided to give up the massive exercise of violence because he was afraid that popular anger would not only topple the communist regime, but it would also meritoriously punish the butchers of the Albanian nation.

The German media have welcomed the decision of the German jury to honor Anne Applebaum. As a historian, she is constantly committed to ensuring that the West does not forget Eastern Europe. Born into a Jewish family in Washington, Applebaum studied Russian and history at Yale and Leningrad universities. In 1988 she moved to Warsaw to work as a correspondent for the British magazine "Economist". 

Applebaum is married to Radoslaw Sikorski, who is currently Poland's foreign minister. Sikorski emigrated in the early 80s to Great Britain, studied at Oxford, worked as a correspondent for British newspapers from Eastern Europe, including from the then Yugoslavia, and with the fall of the communist regime he returned to Poland.

Geographical proximity to Ukraine, but also professional interest in the history of this country, influenced Applebaum to write about Stalin's genocide against the Ukrainian people through starvation. The motive of this campaign was the suppression of Ukrainian culture and nation. In the next book entitled "Gulagu" Applebaum describes the system of Soviet camps, where hundreds of thousands of people were interned. In 1925 the first camps were opened on the islands, they are the forerunners of the Gulag system, which before World War II culminated in mass arrests in 1937/38. The terror continued until 1953, when Stalin died.

The German prize will be awarded to Anne Applebaum in October, at the end of the Frankfurt Book Fair week. The recognition ceremony is a major cultural event in Germany attended by high-ranking political figures and members of the German cultural elite. Until then, Russian aggression against Ukraine is unlikely to end, so one can only guess what the topic of Anne Applebaum's speech will be. Her clear thinking distinguishes and distinguishes Applebaum from many Western intellectuals.