American-Polish journalist and writer Anna Applebaum, who deals with the modern history of Eastern Europe, received the German booksellers’ peace prize on the last day of the Frankfurt Book Fair. The new winner of the peace prize asked for arms to be given to Ukraine and help to the country, which is facing a Russian attack from 2022, writes the DPA group.
“To prevent Russia from spreading an autocratic political system, we must help Ukraine to win,” he says. Ann Applebaum. “If there is even a small hope that we can end the terrible cult of violence in Russia by military victory, just as military victory ended the cult of violence in Germany, we should try to achieve it, author of books and essays in which he long ago warned against Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s aggressive anti-Western policy.
The jury praised her for “revealing the ways in which authors come to power and then maintain it” in their analyzes of communist and post-communist institutions in the Soviet Union and Russia.
At the same time, it was clear that the criticism of the current Russian system would be sharp Frankfurt talk about the current situation. “At a time when democratic achievements and values are mocked and attacked, her work contributes more to the preservation of democracy and peace,” said the jury of the German Booksellers Association, which giving the prize.
Applebaum said at Sunday’s ceremony that responding to Russia’s current aggression with peace would be mere appeasement, according to the AP. “Anyone who wants pacification and wants to surrender not only land, but also people, principles and ideas to Russia, has not learned anything from the history of the 20th century,” he says. According to her, an aggressive Russian response by calling for peace would mean “dealing with the loss of Ukraine’s military, the destruction of Ukrainian culture, the construction of concentration camps for Ukrainians or the removal of Ukrainian children.” .”
According to her, the real lesson from German history is not that Germans should not go to war again, but that “they have a special responsibility to stand up for freedom”, the author emphasized in Frankfurt . According to the DPA group, although her words provoked criticism from some people present, Applebaum was nevertheless praised.
Anne Applebaum was born in 1964 in a Jewish family in Washington. She studied at Yale University, London or Oxford. She began her career as a journalist for the British weekly The Economist in 1988 in Poland, from where she reported on the fall of communism.
He lives in Poland peacefully to this day. In 1992, she married Radoslaw Sikorski, who has been Poland’s foreign minister since last December. Sikorski also attended Sunday’s ceremony.
In addition to articles for magazines such as The Atlantic, Applebaumová also writes books, Gulag, The Iron Curtain, The Red Famine and, most recently, Twilight of Democracy four years ago, published in Czech. It was for Gulag that the author won the American Pulitzer Prize.
German Booksellers Peace Prize it is related to a prize of 25 thousand euros, in a turnover of about 630 thousand crowns. It was given in St. Paul’s Church in Frankfurt. Since 1950, the German Booksellers Association has been awarding it to people who have made a significant contribution to the application of peace ideas in the fields of literature, science and art.
In 1989, Václav Havel, later Czechoslovak and Czech president, received the award as a dissenter. Last year with a keeper grew Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie.
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