Pulitzer Prize Winner Anne Applebaum to Speak at the National Endowment for Democracy on New Book, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-56

This press release was just posted by The National Endowment for Democracy:

The National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies is pleased to announce that it will host a talk by Pulitzer Prize winning author Anne Applebaum, who will speak on her new book Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-56. The event will take place from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. at the NED at 1025 F Street, NW, Suite 800, in Washington, DC. Following Applebaum’s remarks, there will be a question and answer session. 

Among other issues, she will discuss how studying the repressive tactics employed by the Soviets in the immediate post-War period can help to illuminate the challenges faced by civil society in countries living under today’s authoritarian regimes. 

Iron Curtain, which is the follow-up to Applebaum’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Gulag, is a groundbreaking history of how Communism took over Eastern Europe after World War II. Applebaum draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in extensive detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. 

Anne Applebaum is the director of political studies at the Legatum Institute. She is also a columnist for the Washington Post and Slate, and the author of several books, including Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. Since 1989, her journalism has frequently focused on the politics of transition in Russia, central Europe, and other former communist states, but she has also written extensively about British, American, and European politics and international relations.