Anne Applebaum is an American-Polish journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author who writes extensively on communism and the development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the director of the Transitions Forum at the Legatum Institute in London and is an adjunct fellow of the Center for European Policy Analysis. Applebaum is a columnist for The Washington Post, Slate, and The Atlantic and served as an editor for The Economist. In 2012, she published “”Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956,”” which describes the imposition of Soviet totalitarianism in Central Europe after World War II. Her previous book, “”Gulag: A History,”” was published in 2003 and won the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. She is one of the signatories of “”A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.”” She condemned the Russian aggression against Ukraine and was sanctioned by Russian authorities.