Anne Applebaum on Autocracy Inc: Annual Lecture 2025

Pulitzer Prize-winner Anne Applebaum delivers the Vaclav Havel Center’s inaugural lecture on autocracy and democracy. Vaclav Havel Center presents its Inaugural Annual Lecture 2025: AUTOCRACY INC with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist & historian Anne Applebaum Thursday, May 1, 2025 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Bohemian National Hall, New York City Presented in collaboration with: Václav Havel Library (Prague), Czech Center New York, and the Bohemian Benevolent & Literary Association (BBLA) About the Speakers Anne Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a staff writer for The Atlantic, and a senior fellow at the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Her books include Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine; Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944–1956; and Gulag: A History, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction. Her most recent works, Twilight of Democracy and Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Rule the World, are both New York Times bestsellers. She was a longtime columnist and editorial board member at The Washington Post and has contributed to numerous British and international publications. John Shattuck is Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at Tufts University’s Fletcher School and a former Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. He served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from 1993 to 1998, participating in the Dayton Peace Process and helping establish international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. From 1998 to 2001, he was U.S. Ambassador to the Czech Republic. He later served as President of Central European University in Budapest, where he defended academic freedom under an increasingly authoritarian government. His publications include Holding Together (2022), Freedom on Fire (2004), and Rights of Privacy (1980).