Anne Applebaum and the Discreet Charm of Autocracy

Photo: Simone Masetto - Una Collina di Libri

For much of the three decades that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, liberal democracy appeared to be history's undisputed destination. Elections spread across continents, authoritarian regimes seemed destined either to reform or to disappear, and the language of the rule of law, individual rights and the separation of powers became part of a seemingly universal political vocabulary.

Today that confidence has faded and autocracies have regained momentum, while democratic institutions have entered a period of visible strain. Ageing populations, growing economic inequalities, declining trust in institutions and the weakening of social bonds have fuelled discontent across many western societies. At the same time, the digital revolution, once celebrated as a force for openness and democratisation, has provided authoritarian governments with new tools to project influence far beyond their borders. Through social media platforms, online disinformation networks and sophisticated propaganda campaigns, autocracies have learned to exploit the fractures already present within democratic systems.

This is the starting point of Autocracy, Inc., the latest book by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist Anne Applebaum. Rather than depicting authoritarian regimes as isolated states pursuing separate agendas, Applebaum argues that they increasingly operate as a loose but effective network, exchanging resources, technologies and strategies to preserve power and weaken democratic norms.

We met Applebaum in Vittorio Veneto during Una Collina di Libri, where she appeared in conversation with Francesco Chiamulera and Radosław Sikorski — Poland's Foreign Minister and, as it happens, her husband. The discussion ranged from the evolution of authoritarian power and the war in Ukraine to the future of Europe and the challenges facing democratic societies. What emerged was not simply a warning about the strength of autocracies, but a reflection on the conditions under which democracies can survive, adapt and ultimately prevail.

The Autocrats' Playbook

During the discussion, Applebaum insisted that one of the most common misconceptions about the contemporary authoritarian world is the assumption that it forms a coherent ideological bloc. The regimes she examines in Autocracy, Inc. share neither a common worldview nor a common historical trajectory. China's highly sophisticated one-party state has little in common with Vladimir Putin's Russia, the revolutionary theocracy of Iran or the dynastic dictatorship of North Korea. What unites them is something more pragmatic: the determination to monopolise power. 

“These are countries run by leaders or parties seeking to control all power: economic, social and political,” she explained. “They politicise the courts, they control information, and for them the language of liberal democracy — independent judges and media, human rights, the idea that citizens should influence government — is dangerous.”

Yet Applebaum cautioned against viewing the world through the simplistic lens of a new Cold War. The boundary between democracy and autocracy is neither fixed nor absolute. Democratic movements continue to exist inside authoritarian states, from the women’s movement in Iran to pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, while authoritarian ideas and influences increasingly penetrate democratic societies themselves. “It is a grey world, not a black-and-white one,” she said. “There is a battle of ideas taking place not only among countries, but within them. Inside every democracy there is a debate about what kind of political system will prevail.”

A central theme of the evening was the transformation of propaganda in the digital age. Unlike the Soviet Union, which sought to project an attractive vision of a radiant socialist future, today's authoritarian regimes often pursue a different objective. “Putin’s regime do not need us to love Russia,” Applebaum observed. “It simply wants us to hate one another.”

Photo: Simone Masetto - Una Collina di Libri

Rather than promoting a universal ideology, contemporary authoritarian propaganda seeks to undermine trust, amplify division and erode confidence in democratic institutions. By flooding the public sphere with contradictory narratives and attacks on trusted institutions — from universities and newspapers to electoral systems themselves — authoritarian actors encourage citizens to withdraw from public life altogether.

“If you convince people that they cannot understand anything and cannot do anything, then you keep them nihilistic and apathetic. The point of authoritarian propaganda is to make people stay home, not participate, and leave politics to oligarchs, dictators and the small groups that control power.”

The Work Democracy Requires

The argument naturally leads to a broader question: why do so many citizens, even in democratic societies, appear increasingly attracted to strongmen and authoritarian models? “Most human civilisations throughout history have been autocracies,” Applebaum told Il Bo Live after the event. “They were monarchies, tribal systems, totalitarian regimes. In many ways, autocracy is a very natural form of political organisation. Democracy is much harder: it requires social solidarity, participation, compromise and a great deal of effort.”

Autocracy, she argues, always presents itself as the easy solution: “People think that if only one person were in charge, he could fix everything, make all the decisions, cut through bureaucracy and simplify complicated problems. Human beings naturally prefer simple answers, and so they often imagine that autocracy would work better. What they tend to forget is how badly most autocracies actually function.”

Read also: Ukraine’s New Normal: Historian Yaroslav Hrytsak on the War, Europe, and the Power of Memory

Yet Applebaum rejects both complacency and fatalism. “Democracies can lose: they lost in the 1930s. The Roman Republic fell. So I am not naïve about the risks.” The challenge, she says, is not whether liberalism is inherently stronger than authoritarianism, but whether citizens are willing to sustain it: “Democracy requires constant work. The real question is whether we are willing to keep doing that work maintaining our institutions and values and participating in public life. Ultimately, that is a decision every generation has to make for itself.”

That defence of democratic culture also extends to the digital sphere, where Applebaum sees one of the defining political battles of the coming decades: “Democracies certainly need to become more assertive,” she said. “We do not talk enough about what our values actually are, where they come from, how deeply rooted they are in European history and why they matter.” The issue, however, is not censorship. It is understanding the mechanisms that increasingly shape public debate.

“In the case of social media, we have allowed the rules to be set by people who are not interested in democratic discussion. They are not interested in meaningful conversation or constructive debate: their objective is to maximise engagement. They want to keep us online, make us angry, keep us emotionally involved and often divide us, because that is how they make money.”

For Applebaum, the question is therefore not which political views should prevail online, but who decides the rules governing digital public space. Europe has begun to address the issue through regulation, but she expects fierce resistance from technology companies whose business models depend on precisely those dynamics.

The conversation inevitably turned to the war in Ukraine — the conflict that, more than any other, has become a testing ground for the resilience of democratic systems. Contrary to the widespread perception of an unstoppable Russian advance, Applebaum sees a more complex reality: “Ukraine is not losing, and Russia is not winning. For Putin, that is already a significant defeat.”

More than four years into the war, “Russian forces are unable to make substantial advances on the battlefield. They have also proven unable to protect key oil refineries and energy infrastructure, which Ukrainian forces can now strike with increasing effectiveness. Meanwhile, Ukraine has moved ahead technologically developing drones and interceptors.”

For Applebaum, the central contradiction facing the Kremlin is the widening gap between propaganda and reality: “Putin's declared objectives remain unchanged: victory, the destruction of Ukraine as an independent nation and the removal of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Yet those goals are becoming increasingly unattainable. Sooner or later, either Putin himself or whoever succeeds him will have to acknowledge that reality and bring the war to an end.”

Nor does she regard a nuclear escalation as a likely outcome. “China has made it clear — both publicly and, I believe, privately — that it would not accept it. China is now Russia's principal market and trading partner. Russia's war effort depends heavily on Chinese components, electronics and other supplies. For that reason, I do not regard nuclear escalation as a likely scenario at present.”

For all the warnings contained in Autocracy, Inc., Applebaum ended both the public conversation and our interview on a note that was neither triumphalist nor despairing, but grounded in history. The ideas underpinning liberal democracy, she argued, have survived because they answer enduring human aspirations. “The ideas of the rule of law, rights and limits on power are extraordinarily resilient. People who do not have these freedoms still aspire to them. That is why they remain worth defending.” Autocracies can appear efficient, decisive and seductive, but democracy's greatest strength has never been simplicity. It is its ability to correct itself, renew itself and, when citizens choose to defend it, endure.