The Untold Story: Anne Applebaum's Journey

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 utopian plans but no leader to carry them out. Shortly after his death, Nadezhda Krupskaia, the widow of Lenin, said:

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

The Soviet Union always struggled to help their citizens have the necessities of life, and its leaders imprisoned and killed many people in their quest for their utopia.  Russia’s communist era can be remembered for its empty promises, and for the terrible state of the country.

Rationalizations for the deteriorated condition of the Soviet Union took much the same form in the 1920s through the 1970s. Instead of progressing towards the future, the Soviets seemed mired in the past. These rationalizations were not only internal but, also at the international level. Outside of the Soviet Union there were mixed feelings about the communist Soviets. There was and still is nothing fundamentally wrong in wanting a society of social justice, and equality for all, even if the communist ideology meant something very different in practice.  In addition, “To condemn the Soviet Union too thoroughly would be to condemn a part of what the Western Left once held dear as well” (Applebaum). Both of their fundamental ideologies stemmed from the philosophers Marx and Engels, sympathizers of socialism.

Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer prize-winning author and journalist who has devoted her life’s work to researching communism. She also directs the Political Studies branch at the Legatum Institute in London, an independent public policy organization that aims 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. Overall, Applebaum is a well-rounded public intellectual who is currently using her knowledge and personal experience and applying them to more recent events. She has her own website where she uses her expertise to discuss current events such as the current political conflicts in Libya. She also writes about topics that interest the American public such as the War on Terror. Her strong background in Political Studies allows her to write and discuss an array of topics.

Applebaum lived in Russia for several years in the 1990s. Her first-hand experience informed her of the living conditions of its citizens. In Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe Applebaum describes the distinct cultures of the borderlands of Eastern Europe. Among the many locations she visited are Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. She describes the borderlands as a place of, “many nations, one on top of another, so many different people” fighting for space. None of these states had set borders, all had claims on their neighbors’ territory. Applebaum discovered “there are many layers of civilization in the borderlands, and they do not lie neatly one on top of another.”  One of the major purposes of her journey was to understand the complex culture and peoples of the borderlands, who’ve often been neglected in European affairs. With the recent collapse of the Soviet Union she found a marginalized region that was left alone to fend for itself. She quotes Winston Churchill: “The war of the giants has ended; the war of the pygmies begins". Churchill demeans the importance of the borderland’s struggle.  For this region the end of WWII did not signify peace. It was the end of one war and the beginning of another.  


After the collapse of the Soviet Union the borderlands found themselves in a similar situation once again. Applebaum experienced first-hand this change of national identity by speaking to the victims of the conflicts. When children are not able to speak to their own grandparents due to a language barrier she describes it as a clear sign of displaced culture.  She blames the region’s turbulent history, at the hands of the “Giants”, for the loss of identity and the loss of memory.

In a similar manner Soviet communism drastically harmed the people of Russia for generations. Applebaum has examined the most notorious of these harms: the Gulag. Gulag: A History (2003) hones in on the vast network of concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners. The first soviet camps were set up in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. During this chaotic and violent period in Russia’s history “a whole society’s set of values was turned on its head, murder became an accepted part of the struggle” (Applebaum). Lenin imprisoned thousands of people on the grounds of being too rich or coming from an aristocratic background. From 1929, the peak of the camps, until 1953, when Stalin died, the best estimates indicate that eighteen million people passed through the massive system of camps. The effect of the camps was so deep that even in the 1980s Ronald Reagan and soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev were still discussing them. The main goal of this book is to give voice to those silenced by the violence and injustice. It gives voice to the victims that were put away in these detention centers due to the simple fact of disagreeing with the political system that was being imposed on them.


Once Applebaum was visiting the Russian States Archives in Moscow in search for information on the victims of the Gulag. News spread rapidly through the center that an American was asking questions about the Gulag and its many concentration camps. A woman made it a point to seek out Applebaum and set her straight. The woman was by no means rude or angry towards Applebaum for intruding into the subject, but, she wanted to make sure that Applebaum understood a couple of things before attempting to write about the subject. The woman, a former baby nurse who had worked in a children’s home inside one of Stalin’s concentration camps, wanted Applebaum to understand how “clean and orderly the children’s home had been, and to tell her how happy the children had been within its walls.” According to this former nurse, the other nurses and caretakers had “saved” the children from a terrible fate beside their criminal parents (Angel Factories). The criminals in this case were the political prisoners of the Soviet Union. The nurse even showed Applebaum pictures of the children around a colorful Christmas tree. Interestingly, Applebaum noted that the Christmas tree was the only colorful thing in the pictures. The children all had shaved heads and wore the same drab colored gowns, there were no smiles simply a row of little prisoners. This encounter with the former nurse gave Applebaum an insight into Stalin’s two Russias: a Russia of his supporters and a Russia his opponents and enemies.  


A question Anne Applebaum has most likelyhad to face in her career is: “What inspired you, an American woman, to uncover the untold stories of those who lived under Soviet communism?” She might answer those who ask such a question, “Did you ever learn about concentration camps in Europe at some point in your school years?” Most people would readily answer “Of course! Who doesn’t know about the Holocaust?” Applebaum would look at them with knowing eyes and say, "Ah, there is the problem"


Gulag: A History is centered precisely on this problem: the lack of knowledge on the subject of the Soviet’s infringement on its citizens’ civil rights. “All would be sickened by the thought of wearing a swastika. [None would object] to wearing a hammer and sickle on T-shirt or hat” (Applebaum). For some reason it has been difficult in the history of the world to come to terms or understand communism. Applebaum says that while most Americans and Western Europeans clearly see Hitler as “evil” they see communism as a set of good ideas gone wrong somehow. After all the communist ideals were “social justice, equality for all” while the Nazis simply advocated racism. What Applebaum is trying to make the general public understand is that the Soviet’s communism was the same type of “evil” nicely decorated and presented to us with good ideals. She touches upon the fact that it was difficult to come to terms with the idea that “we defeated one mass murderer with the help of another” (Applebaum).

It was not only the Western Left, those who favored socialism, and not only the western communists that attempted to make excuses for the crimes of the Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution had many similarities in ideology to the French and American Revolution. After all it seemed Russia was simply in search of independence and as Applebaum comments “it was harder to condemn a system which sounded, at least, similar to their own” (Applebaum ). On the other hand, the Western Left attempted but struggled in the process of condemning soviet crimes. American Senator Joe McCarthy chose to take a more direct approach of promoting anti-communism in the US. He is most remembered for his public “trials” of communist sympathizers. According to Applebaum, McCarthy’s extremist’s methods of pursuing communists in American public life tarnished the cause of anti-communism with intolerance.   

In this same book Anne Applebaum makes a direct connection between the communist threats Americans once felt with the current terrorism threat that we are living today. She states, “The emergence of new terrorist threats to Western civilization make the study of the old communist threats to Western civilization all the more necessary.” (Applebaum). In other words, in order to be effective in protecting ourselves we must be aware of what we are up against. Most importantly we have to make sure that the information we are receiving is the most accurate. As it was seen with Senator Joe McCarthy, during the United States anti-communist foreign policy era, it was very easy to go from criticism to intolerance. We must learn from our past mistakes.  

In a recent article, “Bin Laden Killed: for a day or two, we’ll feel like Americans again”, Applebaum magnifies the lack of unity that exists in our country today. Applebaum portrays the American public as puppets. We celebrate and cheer when we are called upon to do so, such as after learning of Bin Laden’s death, and then quickly resort back to our old ways. We lack the facts of what is occurring around us. According to Applebaum it’s because of this conformity that we are often left in the dark such as occurred during the Soviet era. We decided to listen to the false promises of Nadezhda Krupskaia, the widow of Lenin, because it was easy to do.

 The New York Sun has praised Anne Applebaum for doing what no other Westerner had attempted to do, provide the world with the history of the Gulag based on the combination of eyewitness accounts and archival records. What is more impressive is her versatility in writing. She is a Pulitzer Prize winning author who has not stopped at simply writing books or writing for newspapers. Applebaum uses technology to reach a wide variety of people by writing in various blogs on the web. During the political conflict in Libya she kept us informed through The Washington Post. After the death of Osama Bin Laden she chided us for our conformity and urged us to stay informed. In her website she has articles dating back to 1996 when she was beginning her research for her books. Her life’s work spans decades of dedication to bringing the general public insight into unknown territory. Applebaum sets an ideal example of how we shoud eliminate injustice around the world, we need not to look away wherever human rights violations are occurring we must act with the resources that are available to us.

                                                                                                                              

Aditional Source:

Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. New York, NY: Random House Inc., 2003. Print.