Salzburg picks Anne Applebaum

Keynote speaker at the summer festival will be a former Economist jounalist, married to the Polish foreign minister. She is the author of important books on the Soviet Gulag and the current rise of western autocracy.

From the press release:

The Polish-American historian and journalist Anne Applebaum, one of the leading public intellectuals of our time, will deliver the keynote address at the opening ceremony of the 2025 Salzburg Festival….

Her address, titled ‘Democracy and the Music Festival’, will respond to sweeping ideological realignment, apparent democratic decline, and the rise of authoritarian alliances by defending civil society and artistic freedom as the core values of human civilization.

‘Anne Applebaum is one of the most incisive commentators on the rise of autocratic governance in the East and West, as well as a powerful and compelling voice against the erosion of Western democratic norms,’ says artistic director Markus Hinterhäuser. ‘Her brilliant writing tackles the critical questions surrounding this complex and troubling global trend, providing sharp insight into what is at stake for the world today.’

Anne Applebaum was born into a Jewish family in Washington, D.C. in 1964. After studying Russian history and literature at Yale and international relations at the London School of Economics, she began her journalistic career in 1988 as a foreign correspondent for The Economist in Poland. She was present as the Iron Curtain came down a year later and reported on the fall of the Berlin Wall…

Anne Applebaum is married to Radosław Sikorski, who served as the Polish foreign minister from 2007 to 2014 and again since 2023.

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