In her acceptance speech for the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, historian and journalist Anne Applebaum—a figure long revered for her critical and haunting works on Soviet atrocities—did something unexpected. While honoured for her dedication to truth and peace, she called for weapons, not words, in defence of Ukraine. This apparent contradiction is not new for Applebaum, who, throughout her work, has unearthed the horrors of authoritarian regimes and the ways in which societies allow themselves to be subjugated, inch by inch, word by word, until resistance seems impossible.
Applebaum’s career is a testament to the cost of capitulation. ‘Gulag’, her harrowing account of the Soviet Union’s network of labour camps, stands as one of the most definitive modern works on the topic, as chilling as it is necessary. Through exhaustively documented testimonies, the book recounts the fate of millions whose lives were consumed by a system built on repression. In her ‘Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956,’ Applebaum traces how Eastern European states became pawns in Stalin’s machinations, each effort to resist crushed under a seemingly relentless ideological machine. Perhaps her most sobering work is ‘Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine, which chronicles the engineered famine that starved millions in Soviet Ukraine in 1932–1933—a human-made catastrophe designed to break Ukrainian resistance to Soviet rule. Through these narratives, Applebaum continually reminds readers of the danger posed by unchecked authoritarianism - and, crucially, by the silence of those who might oppose it.
Viewed in this light, her speech should come as no surprise. Her words echo those of writers and thinkers in previous moments of historical peril—those who, in the face of burgeoning oppression, have warned that moral neutrality, if not outright cowardice, can be as complicit as collaboration. Perhaps one of the most famous cases comes from Winston Churchill, a writer himself before he became a wartime leader. In the 1930s, his unheeded calls for Britain to prepare for conflict with Hitler were dismissed as warmongering, an overreaction from a man bitter over his political isolation. Yet Churchill, as he later argued in ‘The Gathering Storm, recognized the peril in appeasement and the disastrous cost of a delayed response. Had Britain heeded his calls, perhaps the Second World War might have taken a different shape.
Other writers have faced similar censure for their seeming bellicosity, such as George Orwell. His essays on totalitarianism in Spain and ‘Homage to Catalonia’ illuminate how the West’s unwillingness to confront fascism and communism head-on led to tragic outcomes for countless innocents. Orwell knew well the consequences of naïve idealism and the tendency to whitewash evil in the name of political expediency. His firsthand experiences with Spanish anarchists, betrayed by Stalin’s operatives, taught him that unwillingness to oppose aggressive powers leaves the path wide open for atrocities. Orwell’s legacy of confronting unpleasant truths, however divisive, mirrors Applebaum’s dedication to unearthing the darkness embedded within totalitarian histories.
Then, there is the instance of Federico Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda - poets who wrote passionately about the injustices of fascism, with Lorca losing his life (being murdered) in the Spanish Civil War and Neruda narrowly escaping death during Chile’s dictatorship. Through their poetry, they portrayed the horror and urgency of resisting authoritarianism, appealing to the power of words and art to incite change before a society becomes irredeemably oppressed.
Who can forget Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who wrote most illuminatingly about Soviet repression in his monumental works, especially the classic The Gulag Archipelago. Having endured the camps himself, Solzhenitsyn warned against the normalization of oppression and was expelled from the USSR. His writings were intended as a stark reminder of the personal and societal cost of allowing tyranny to flourish, even tacitly. Solzhenitsyn’s stance was clear: those who desire peace must first confront the structures that make oppression possible.
During the Nazi occupation of France, Camus used his role as the editor of the underground newspaper Combat to argue against collaborating with the regime. Later, in The Plague, he explored the futility of accepting oppression, using the fictional town’s struggle against a spreading epidemic as an allegory for resistance against totalitarianism. Camus insisted that ignoring oppression, even out of a desire for peace, allows evil to grow.
Applebaum’s recent call for arms rather than appeasement is both timely and deeply rooted in her life’s work. She is among a tradition of writers who, having studied the cost of silence, warn against a pacifism that veils complicity. In her view, the issue is not merely Ukraine’s sovereignty; it is the question of whether democratic nations will stand by as a predatory power seeks to erase another nation. Her works - particularly those on Eastern Europe’s traumas - are cautionary tales of what happens when the world averts its gaze.
For peace is rarely kept by appeasing a hungry power; it is, often, a fight wrested from the jaws of tyranny.
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