Anne Applebaum Quotes

United States, Columnist
July 25, 1964

Anne Elizabeth Applebaum is an American journalist and historian who is also a citizen of Poland. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, she has written extensively about Marxism-Leninism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She is a visiting Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics, where she runs Arena, a project on propaganda and disinformation. She has also been an editor at The Economist and The Spectator, and a member of the editorial board of The Washington Post (2002–06).

Also known as Historian, Writer, Non-Fiction Writer, Journalist

The evolution of a bourgeoisie is a healthy phenomenon when it grows and prospers thanks to bourgeois values: hard work, honesty, personal responsibility.

Anne Applebaum
I believe democracy can survive. But it's certainly true that the euphoria of the 1990s - an era when democracy was spreading and more and more people found it attractive - has ended. Trump is not a cause but rather a symptom of this change.

Anne Applebaum
- Change
- Democracy
- Symptom

Putin is not a mass murderer. But, having said that, he is a product of the KGB, and the KGB was, of course, the secret police force of the Soviet Union.

Anne Applebaum
- Product
- Putin
- KGB
Donald Trump has never tried to reach out to all the American people, he never uses the language of unity, he doesn't try to charm or persuade. He just says, thanks to the people who voted for me and the rest of you are losers.

Anne Applebaum
- People
- Thanks
- Losers
Trump has learned how to function in a world in which people now live in very separate realities, where they get their news from Facebook recommendations and believe in a particular set of facts. Others, who live in a different reality, know quite a different set of facts.

Anne Applebaum
- Believe
- Reality
- Facts
Globalization has genuinely drained power away from national politicians and people feel it. People in our fast digital age are also frustrated with the comparably slow democratic processes. Many young people - and some old people - want to know, Why does everything take so long? Why can't someone just decide and then move forward?

Anne Applebaum
The nationalist right have common views. They hate the EU, they hate NATO, they dislike trade, they admire Russia. Many of them are funded by Putin.

Anne Applebaum
- Hate
- Views
- Funded
A lot of the Russian economy is built around people who are one way or another milking the state and taking money from the state and recycling it into their private bank accounts. And there are a lot of people who are taking advantage of that, so it's not just one person. It's a kind of web of people doing that, and that's how the system stays in power and how people stay in control.

Anne Applebaum
- Money
- Control
- System

Putin has made life difficult for a lot of Russia's richest men; they don't like the sanctions; they don't like the war with the West. Many of them have houses and families and businesses in the West, and so I can see them being unhappy. But at the moment, the political system is so constructed that it would be very difficult for them to leave. That's not saying it couldn't change.

Anne Applebaum
What's interesting about Navalny is that he has run a - not so much a pro-democracy campaign in Russia, but an anti-corruption campaign. He seems to have access to quite a lot of information about very senior Russians, including Putin.

Anne Applebaum
The Russian economy is about the size of the Italian economy; it's very small, and Russia's military force is larger than it was, because Putin's been investing in it, but it still doesn't compare to that of the United States, and his reach and aim still don't compare.

Anne Applebaum