Autocracies in the 21st Century

YIVO-Bard Winter Program Keynote Lecture Admission: Free Registration is required. Register

We think we know what an autocratic state looks like: There is an all-powerful leader at the top who controls the police. The police threaten the people with violence. There are evil collaborators, and maybe some brave dissidents.

But in the 21st century, that bears little resemblance to reality. Nowadays, autocracies are underpinned not by one dictator, but by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures, surveillance technologies, and professional propagandists, all of which operate across multiple regimes. Corrupt companies in one country do business with corrupt companies in another. The police in one country can arm and train the police in another, and propagandists share resources and themes, pounding home the same messages about the weakness of democracy.

International condemnation and economic sanctions cannot move the autocrats. Even popular opposition movements, from Venezuela to Hong Kong to Moscow, don't stand a chance. These dictators aren't linked by a unifying ideology, like communism, but rather a common desire for power, wealth, and impunity.

In this conversation, journalist Anne Applebaum and YIVO Executive Director Jonathan Brent discuss how autocracies have evolved in the 21st century.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. 

About the Speakers

After seventeen years as a columnist at The Washington Post, Anne Applebaum became a staff writer at The Atlantic in January 2020. She is the author of five critically acclaimed and award-winning books: Twilight of Democracy, Red Famine, Iron Curtain, Between East and West, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She divides her time between Poland, where her husband is foreign minister, and Washington, D.C.

Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From 1991 to 2009 he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in 1991. Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, 1948-1953 (Harper-Collins, 2003) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books, 2008). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College.