Starting to write about Anne Applebaum (draft)

It was the winter of 1924, Lenin had just died leaving Russia’s communist future submerged in uncertainty. Russia was now a country with many promises but no leader to carry them out, no leader to answer its questions. Shortly after his death, Nadezhda Krupskaia the widow of Lenin, was quoted for saying: 

“We are building socialism … and as long as we are building socialism but have not yet built it, we will also have homeless children.”

Russia’s communist era can be remembered for its empty promises and excuses for the reality for the terrible state of the country. The same, deteriorated, description of the state of the Soviet Union was one that could have been written at any time in the 1920s, 1930s, or 1940s.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer prize-winning author and journalist who has devoted her life’s work to researching and writing extensively on communism. She is also the current Director of Political Studies at the Legatum Institute in London. The Legatum Institute is an independent public policy organization. They conduct research, produce publications, and programs to support self-sustaining societies around the world. In this organization Applebaum has focused on projects related to political and economic transitions, such as Russia’s transition from communism. She lived in Russia for several years in the 1990s conducting research on the state of the country and the living conditions of its citizens. In 1995 she wrote a book titled Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe. This book was about her journey through the Soviet Union just as it was about to break apart. She is able to provide a first-hand account of her experience in Russia as well as second-hand accounts from the Russians themselves. More recently she has written about the lasting effects Communisms has left on the people of Russia. Applebaum published another book in 2003 about the victims and development of the soviet concentration camps. She is a well-rounded public intellectual who is currently using her knowledge and personal experience and applying them to more recent events, such as the current political conflicts in Libya.