If you are reading this initial post you probably know who I am, and maybe you even know why at this exact second I am in rural Poland, sitting in the library of an old house that my husband and I acquired three decades ago, and then renovated for almost as long. It’s been photographed before, so I might as well share a picture here, taken soon after Christmas (note the dying poinsettias, stray wooden angels)
And if you don’t know: I’m originally American, but I live here part of the time, when I am not in Washington, or elsewhere. I wrote about the fall of Communism here in 1989, as a very junior journalist. In the subsequent three decades I’ve written several books about the history of the Soviet Union - on the history of the Gulag, the history of the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after WW2, and the history of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33. I’ve also published in a long list of British and American newspapers and magazines. Mostly, but not only, I wrote about US, UK and EU politics. Now I write for the Atlantic, and teach a bit a Johns Hopkins University. I have a new book, Autocracy, Inc, being published in July
Maybe you even know that, along the way, a strange and thing happened: Much of what I once studied, as a historian of totalitarian systems - ways of thinking and behaving that I believed would never return - has come back. Not only has Russia returned to many Soviet habits, but the lure of authoritarianism, described in my 2020 book, Twilight of Democracy, has also returned in both the US and Europe. That story has been my main theme for the past several years, and I am sure it will continue to be so. I write about the psychology, the politics, and the information technology of this transformation wherever it happens, and I also talk about these things a lot. I will try to share them here too.
I’m also planning to use this space to share the work of other people, and maybe to touch on things I don’t write about for the Atlantic. Paintings, for example. Or novels. But we will see how it goes.
In any case - here’s a link to one of my most recent Atlantic articles. It describes an extraordinary courtroom speech, delivered by Oleg Orlov, the leader of Memorial, Russia’s first and most important historical and human-rights organization. It followed in a long tradition of such speeches, as I explain:
On February 27, Orlov received a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for “discrediting the Russian army.” Following in a long tradition of Soviet dissidents before him, Orlov made a courtroom speech, addressed to those in the room and beyond. Joseph Brodsky, who later won the Nobel Prize in Literature, sparred in 1964 with a Soviet judge who asked him by what right he dared state “poet” as his occupation: “Who ranked you among poets?” Brodsky replied, “No one. Who ranked me as a member of the human race?” That exchange circulated throughout the Soviet Union in handwritten and retyped versions, teaching an earlier generation about bravery and civic courage.
Orlov’s speech will also be reprinted and reread, and someday it will have the same impact too...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/oleg-orlov-russian-activist-memorial/677619/
Anyone who hasn’t read it yet (and if you’re here and haven’t read it, then what’s wrong with you!!!) then I can not recommend Red Famine highly enough (even more relevant today of course than when I read it) but seriously go out and get yourself a copy
Will give you real insight into Ukraine and page after page you’ll read something that blows your mind, not just at the Kremlin level but down in the Villages what is it that made people behave this way is a question that will haunt you
Anyway welcome to Substack Anne, glad I stumbled across u on Notes to know you’re here
Thanks Anne for the elegant piece of writing and very welcome to Substack. Looking forward to your writing, esp since you combine many qualities, American, versed in Eastern Europe including languages i subpose and with a somewhat ‘conservative’ outlook to the world