Pulitzer-winning journalist Anne Applebaum to attend events in Bucharest, Timișoara

Renowned, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum is set to meet the Romanian audience in two events held in Bucharest and Timișoara on March 12 and 13.

On Wednesday, March 12, she will attend the presentation of the annual EFOR 2026 Report, Democracy and Civil Society in Eastern Europe, produced by Expert Forum (EFOR), in Bucharest. After the event, Applebaum will talk to EFOR president Sorin Ioniță about the trajectory of democracy in the region.

Subsequently, her two volumes, Autocracy INC. The Dictators Who Want to Run the World and Red Famine. Stalin’s War on Ukraine, both recently published in the Kronika collection of Litera Publishing House, will be launched, along with a signing event.

The latter book documents the deliberate hunger organized in Ukraine by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin between 1932 and 1933. The book is based on numerous archival materials and firsthand testimonies available only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as well as the work of Ukrainian researchers practicing in various parts of the world.

On Thursday, March 13, at 6 PM, at the invitation of the West University of Timișoara, Anne Applebaum will be in a dialogue with journalist Marian Voicu. The event, titled Why Democracies Turn Against Themselves and held in the Aula Magna of the West University of Timișoara, aims to look into the fragility of contemporary democracies.

“We all have a clear image in mind of an autocratic state. But in the 21st century, this image seems to be increasingly diverging from reality. Nowadays, autocracies are no longer led by a single individual with dictatorial tendencies, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, security services, and professional propagandists,” said Anne Applebaum.

Anne Applebaum is a historian and journalist, contributor to The Atlantic, and senior associate at the Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of history books that have become benchmarks for Eastern Europe, including Gulag. A History (published in Romanian by Litera Publishing, 2023), winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction in 2004.

Her newest book, Autocracy INC., published in 2024, examines the network of dictatorships, such as Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and others, that work together to support each other, preserve power, and undermine the democratic world.

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