100. Anne Applebaum: Corruption, Populism, and Ending the War in Ukraine

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0:19Welcome to The Rest Is Politics, leading with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell, joined today by a writer, historian, journalist that both of us have known for quite a long time, by the name of Anne Applebaum. and particularly interesting at the moment because she's written many books but her latest is about what it's called autocracy inc and it speaks to a lot of the things that we've talked about for some time i suspect the name putin may come up quite a lot i suspect that ukraine may come up quite a lot i suspect populism may come up quite a lot i suspect trump may come up quite a lot but she's somebody who's been i think on a pretty interesting political journey herself but has ended up effectively as a something of a political campaigner even though she might not like to be described like that.

1:02So Anne, welcome. I want to start by asking you quite a big question that allows you to tell us something about yourself and your life. And that is if you could give us the various chapters of your relationship with Eastern Europe. I thought you were going to ask for my relationship to a more complex relationship. But no, my first experience with Eastern Europe was a trip as a student to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, when it was still the Soviet Union. And I actually now, in retrospect, feel lucky that I was one of the last generations of students who did see it because a couple of years later it was already different.

1:37I then lived in Poland in 1989 and watched 1990 and watched the transition year. So that's kind of part two. Part three, I married somebody who became a Polish politician. So had an insider view to how complex that is. And there was a sort of happy part of that and then a less happy part of that. And then maybe chapter four is I watched Poland be almost taken over by an autocratic populist party that was trying to undermine the political system. And then maybe chapter five is then I watched kind of broad coalition, pro-democracy coalition win an election in October. So we have at the moment, we're at the happy endings phase.

2:19But of course, life goes on and it could go the other way. Tell us a little bit. You said married a politician, there was a happy part and a less happy part to that. What did you mean by that? Well, politics changed in the some like around 2012, 2013, 2014. You will both know this too, the way that people talked about politics and the rise in the level of scorn for politicians and the focus on everything you do in your life. And, you know, when you walk out the door, you have to worry about who's going to take your picture and how they're going to use it. the all-encompassing nature of media changed the, you know, it sort of made it much less fun than it had been a few years earlier.

3:01I was interested in the name Putin didn't come up in your account of your relationship. Is that because you're trying to block it out a bit? It feels to me that that's a very, very important part of your relationship with Eastern Europe. Yes. I mean, it's not really, I was thinking about my personal relationship. I became aware of Putin and who he was very early. And I suppose I've written a lot about him. And I did start, You know, I did feel from the moment he was appointed that I worried about him as somebody who bragged about and talked about his past in the KGB. He talked about himself, you know, using the language of sort of Leninism about himself and how important the secret police were even when he was president.

3:40So I worried about what he was going to do. And then almost the first thing he did actually was when he became head of the FSB, which was the new KGB, he put a portrait of Yuri Andropov up in the building. And Andropov was famous for one thing. When he became head of the KGB in the 1980s, he was the one who led the first really harsh crackdown on what was then a really tiny, wasn't even a democracy movement. It was just little tiny dissident groups. Andropov had been the head of the Moscow embassy in Budapest in 1956. And he was obsessed with this idea that you need to crush the opposition. And when I saw Putin do that, I thought, right, that's which way it was going.

4:22And it did. So you were born in America, but you spent a lot of time in Britain. Married, as you say, now to a Polish politician who's also well-known in Britain. Went to Rory's old school, part of the Bullingdon, I believe, when he was at Oxford University. So let's just set him in the UK context as well. What did you think and how did you feel about the way that we, and I mean we as in the Blair government, but also we, the West, handled Putin when it first became clear that he was going to be president? Were we too soft? Were we taken in? So people were too willing to believe that there was a way to trade with Russia neutrally.

5:01In other words, that we can have just an economic relationship with them and that the politics of Russia won't ever affect that. We were also far too willing to allow our financial institutions to be used by what we came to be known as the Russian oligarchs to essentially steal and launder their money and to hide it, whether they hid it in anonymous companies or offshore accounts or indeed London property. we were much too willing to accept that. And we somehow assumed that it wouldn't affect us, that it was somehow, you know, we could allow this to happen and it was, you know, it was kind of their problem over there and there would be no impact on us.

5:43But I'm afraid there was an impact on us and it was corrupting. You studied at Yale and as you say, you went to Eastern Europe before the fall of the Berlin Wall. So there must have been a strange shift from, I suppose, the kind of the Cold War mentality of the 1980s and you would have seen American anti-communism. You then will have spent more and more time in Britain in the 90s and the 2000s. Did you find a distinctive British view of Central East Europe that was different to an American view? Was there a form of British naivety or American naivety? What was the strength and weaknesses of the kind of establishment views of those two countries?

6:19I mean, the phenomenon of Londongrad has no American equivalent. So the feeling that you had at one point, it's not really the 90s, later that you had in London, that there's kind of Russian money pouring in and Russians dominating the art world and, you know, Russians in Knightsbridge and Mayfair. I mean, I don't think there's an exact U.S. equivalent to that. It sort of felt like London was the place that the oligarchy made its home. And some of that might just be proximity and you have some nice houses here, that kind of thing. But some of it obviously was this is where the, you know, It's not a very nice word, but where the enablers were, you know, the accountants and the lawyers and the property dealers and so on.

7:01And clearly the law made it possible or made it more likely that, I don't know, that Boris Berezovsky would live here or that Abramovich would be here. It's sort of a history. I mean, there's certainly bits of the kind of British establishment that often thinks America is too black and white about the world, too confrontational. I guess we probably would have taken that view about the Iraq war. We probably, many people took that view around the Cold War, particularly the British left. Is that something that you picked up on that was a bits of British political culture which tended not to want to get into a confrontational relationship with Russia?

7:36I mean, that's more of a German problem. You know, the Germans really, really, really don't want any confrontation with Russia. And that must be some deep historical kind of psychosis. Here, actually, I mean, actually, one of the things I liked about Britain in the 80s and 90s was I liked the clarity. This is not just about, this is more about Eastern Europe than Russia. You know, the welcoming attitude, at least in the beginning, towards the idea of integration of Central Europe into Western Europe. You know, the sort of positive feeling and the feeling that the end of communism was good and that we were going to be a country that led the way in bringing down that system and all the British advisors who went over there.

8:14I mean, that felt to me very positive. In the case of Russia, it was almost the, there's an American expression, the soft bigotry of low expectations. You know, we just assume the Russians are immoral. And so if they come here and spend their money in ugly ways, or if they kill people in central London, well, that's just what Russians do. And I think it took a long time for people here to understand, as I said, how corrupting that was and ultimately how dangerous. But I liked the British attitude towards Central and Eastern Europe. And I liked the idea that, you know, that Britain was an open, welcoming place, as I said, initially.

8:48But the word you used was enablers, the enablers, whether that be, and in a sense, your latest book is Autocracy, Inc. sort of speaks to this theme of kind of global networks where the policymakers and the law enforcement agencies, to some extent, are kind of turning blind eye to stuff that they deep down know is going on and know, as you say, is corrupting. And as that game has gone on, and I think for the Russians partly it has been a game, they must look back at that and think they were winning that game. Not only did they think they were winning it, they saw it as evidence of hypocrisy. And so actually, this is, I learned about money laundering from the Russian opposition.

9:28It was the Russian opposition who were watching this stuff happen, and who became very cynical about Western democracy, because they said, you guys talk about human rights, you know, and you talk about the rule of law. But then you let all this stolen money flow through the city of London, not only the city of London, but it was somehow visible, particularly visible in the city of London. You know, so do you really believe what you say you believe? And so it began, it began by the... Of course it was a fair point. I mean, of course it was a fair point. I mean, I started writing about kleptocracy and the problem of anonymous companies and so on, you know, a decade ago, inspired by them.

10:04My understanding of autocratic regimes has often come from their opponents who, of course, analyze them and know them very well. And the Russian opposition were very clear about this a decade ago or more. This word hypocrisy is very interesting, isn't it? because it's true of the way in which many, many regimes view us, view us in the United States. You know, they will say, you talk about human rights, but you're doing this in Yemen or you're doing this in Iraq or you're doing this in Israel. Or I've met African leaders say, you know, you claim to care about whatever you're talking about, how we treat our opposition, but you're still giving us development aid.

10:39And those big tropes going all the way back to the Soviet Union of saying, you know, you claim to care about civil rights, but look at how you're treating people in their own country, etc. So as autocracies build an argument against democracy, it's always been true that hypocrisy is the central allegation and has been for 100 years. Yes. I mean, there's something about foreign policy that is almost inherently involves hypocrisy because you need to deal with people who you disagree with. And I don't sort of disagree with that. I mean, my argument in my book is not that we should not speak to dictatorships or not deal with them or not have any trade with them.

11:09It's just to be clear about who they are. And of course, the hypocrisy argument works the other way. I mean, the Russians go around the world talking about Western imperialism, and yet they have just launched the most bloody and brutal imperial war of this century. And they talk about conquering neighboring nations and using language we haven't heard since the 19th century. So there's plenty of hypocrisy to go around. And as I said, it's almost a given. I mean, I think it was the money and the way in which the Russians perceived that the money was not only corrupting Russia, but was corrupting us that I think surprised them.

11:44How did it corrupt us? So just to sort of spill that out in a little bit more detail. So I suppose the benign way as well, you know, which presumably the optimists were saying, which is, well, it's going to be bring a lot of money into London. Which it did. Give us the bad side. How did it corrupt us? So first of all, I know this story a little bit better in the U.S. than I know it here, but the vehicles that are used to hide money from tax, you know, or from your regime back home are also often the same vehicles that are used to hide money in politics. So if you want to donate money to a political cause and you want to do it anonymously, the vehicles that are set up to do it are there.

12:19In the U.S. it's actually a huge problem. The modern autocracies operate as opaque, untransparent political systems where people have power and they have money and you don't really know why. And that's the source of their power. It's the source of what makes people afraid of them. And the degree to which our systems have also become like that and that people can become wealthy in strange ways and that there's a lack of transparency in the system and that money can be hidden and so on. And our politicians effectively are becoming corrupt. Our political parties in Britain and the US are being bought by these interests.

12:50I don't think everybody has been bought. But if you are determined to try to buy somebody, and if somebody is interested in being bought, there are obviously ways to do it. Funny enough, in the UK, it's often very on very low levels. It's very small amounts of money. You know, I don't know, you're a member of the conservative Friends of Russia or something, and somebody takes you to dinner. I mean, it's sort of whereas it can be quite spectacular elsewhere. I mean, if you think about the most famous example, actually, is the former German chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, who left office and almost immediately afterwards went to work for the Russian gas industry and has been doing so ever since.

13:24And you can, of course, find examples of American politicians who leave and go and work for all kinds of dictators, usually in the form of a lobbying organization or PR company. Actually, I think in the U.S. there's also – there are so many hidden ways to donate money now. I mean, we have this PAC system, political action committees, and we don't really know who gives money to them in some cases. I mean, it's technically illegal for foreigners to give money. But a Russian with a U.S. passport who mysteriously gets a lot of money from his uncle and donates it to a political party, I mean, that's probably legal.

13:58What about political funding here? one of the best known routes for buying political influence has been the presence of the Russian oligarchs that you're talking about, particularly Conservative Party fundraisers, where people like Boris Johnson literally hawk themselves out to go and play tennis with these guys. Yes, that was a famous example. Is that a form of corruption? I mean, corruption is defined differently in different countries, but it's certainly a form of the Russians seeking to buy influence. And not all of it is illegal. There's also another form of influence, which is there are parts of the business community here and famously, again, in Germany, you know, or in the US, who do so much business with Russia that they also become, in fact, lobbyists for the regime.

14:42And I mean, in Germany, there's, you know, famously, the German gas industry is very keen on having a good relationship with Putin or was keen on it, and was keen on having a relationship with Russia. And that was because it was in their interest to do so. So in the way, the Russians bought their way into the German establishment that way. There's a version of that here. I mean, here it's a little bit, you know, because the city is so big and the financial volumes are so huge. I'm not suggesting that the Russians corrupted all of it, but you can make friends for yourself. I mean, there's a third thing that the Russians do, which may have happened here, which is they create business opportunities for politicians they want to encourage or their friends.

15:23And so, you know, in Italy, for example, the Salvini's political party, there was a businessman who was close to Salvini who was offered some business deals in Russia. It looks like Berlusconi was at one point offered some business deals in Russia. You know, that's not illegal. There's no, there's no, it's not like someone's passing a bribe in a brown envelope to one of those politicians, but it's a way of influencing the incurring favor. And of course, there's clearly, there are a couple of figures close to Farage who were in that position. Help us understand the differences between these donations from different countries.

15:58So I guess somebody listening might say, well, there are also political donations and business opportunities being provided by people who have very strong views on Israel, or there are political opportunities and donations being provided by people who are close to China. Is there some way of understanding the difference between pro-Russian, pro-Israeli, pro-Saudi, pro-Chinese money in this context? I mean, you know, all of them could have, you know, you could imagine negative effects in any of those circumstances. You know, you want to look at what's the ultimate goal, you know, is the goal, for example, to perpetuate an autocratic regime that's then going to cause us trouble in other ways.

16:36And so looking back on the long relationship with Russia, We may one day say this about China, by the way. Looking back on the long relationship with Russia, I mean, you know, were we creating the monster that then invaded Ukraine, created havoc, caused a security crisis for all of Europe and possibly eventually for the UK as well? You know, did we feed into something that eventually came back to haunt us? So again, it's not only about internal corruption or it's also about what was the long term impact of that relationship. You know, I guess the United States probably has there are plenty of wealthy Americans in London who have the ear of various politicians, too.

17:15But it doesn't seem very likely, at least at this exact second that we are by cultivating a relationship with the United States, that Britain is creating a security threat that will haunt it later on. So there's there's that aspect of it as well. But that could, I presume, be true for Israel, could be true for Saudi Arabia, could be true of China. Yeah, I'm not picking on Russia. In fact, my book is about the relationship between these autocracy networks. There have been some amazing books written about this. Remember Oliver Bullough, Butler to the World, the one that you talked about, Tom Burgess.

17:45Tom Burgess. Tom Burgess. Kleptopia. Kleptopia. And we've kind of all turned a blind eye, really. Because, I mean, I remember first reading Oliver Bullough's book and thinking, oh, my God, this is like all here. And yet it didn't really make that much of an impact on the political debate, I don't think. It's one of my favorite subjects. I mean, I don't have the answer. Why this hasn't? Why doesn't it? I mean, because there are other kinds of impacts. So why can't anybody afford to live in London? You know, why is so much of central London bought up by people who were using London property as a form of wealth storage or money laundering?

18:21Or even just insurance policy. Or insurance policy. why wasn't there a city-wide revolt led by people in their late 20s who can't afford property I don't know I mean I have a number of theories I don't have a full explanation one reason is because it's so complicated I mean it's funny kleptopia the book by a former FT journalist which I reviewed is an excellent book it's brilliantly reported it's also very hard to follow at times because well it's complicated it's very complicated you know we're talking about money that goes around the world you know in nine seconds that's the first piece of it and so it's hard to understand.

18:54It's hard to understand how it relates to you and your inability to afford a flat and made a veil, you know. But part of the job of politics, right, this is a political podcast, part of the job of politics is to ensure that people do understand those links, do understand the impact that's having on people's lives. But it sort of feels like because it's so complicated, and probably because we did kind of enable as we went, that it's just too complicated to explain. and so you'd sort of turn a blind eye. Let me just say a couple of specifics. Should Abramovich have been allowed to buy Chelsea Football Club?

19:27That's one. Should Lebedeff have been allowed to become quite a serious, significant player in the British media landscape? So I probably don't have as strong feelings about football as you do, you know, or as deep a knowledge of what other, I don't really know who else owns football clubs and whether they're nice, upstanding people or not. probably you could say before Abramovich was allowed to do anything, we should have known where his money came from. And so in the way that you would ask if somebody was buying any big company, what's the origin of their money? But it's pretty obvious why a Russian oligarch might want a Premier League football club.

20:05Of course. He wants to launder himself into respectability. You know, he's now, he became a benign figure. In fact, the only Premier League football match I've ever been to was a Chelsea match. and Abramovich was there and people cheered him when he walked into the stadium. So this is something I have to remember. So for listeners who don't know this as well as you do, how did these people make their money? How did Abramovich make money? How did Lebedev make money? Who are they? Why should we be worried? So it depends. I mean, Abramovich, actually, I don't know the full story, but very often they made money through their proximity to power.

20:39So what an oligarch is in Russia, it's somebody who, you know, They haven't earned their money by inventing some new thing and climbing their way up the ladder and, you know, borrowing money from the bank. And they were given access to money. In some cases, they were given roles in state companies. I mean, I'm now oversimplifying. I mean, they're all different. Am I right in saying some of the cases in London that they've taken against each other make it pretty clear that they were connected, some of them, to organized crime? Because some of these cases, they're literally saying this person was my godfather and this is the traditional mafia relationship.

21:12And this is how much I should have given him and not given him. And this is the protection I required. Yes. I mean, mafia is also a weird word because when the mafia is the state, you know, do you talk about it as the mafia or do you call it something else? We're still quite reluctant to look at Putin and call it a mafia state in the way that, say, Garry Kasparov does. I'm very happy to call it a mafia state. It's like we need to get into this sort of battle between democracies and autocracies, because I still think that we sometimes want to apply the judgments about democracies to the way that these guys operate.

21:45Even now, even with Ukraine, you will still say that, you know, Sergei Lavrov says something and it's like he's well, he's the foreign minister of Russia, as opposed to he's part of this kind of what you would define as a mafia state. But this is back to your question about hypocrisy and diplomacy. I mean, you know, at some level, maybe somebody has to deal with Sergei Lavrov at a meeting. And so they don't want to say to the person they have to have a meeting with, you know, we think you're a criminal. But it's nevertheless useful to remember that they're criminals. I mean. And right, here's interesting.

22:18You talked about your role as the wife of a current foreign minister, Radislav Sikorski, in Poland. Do you feel you ever have to tailor your views because he is now in this very sensitive diplomatic position? Well, fortunately, there is no role in the Polish constitution for the foreign minister's wife. So I don't actually really have to do anything. I mean, in terms of, you know, participating. The other fortunate thing was the one issue where he is, you know, he's now very centrally involved and plays a large role happens to be an issue that I've been writing about for a decade, which is Ukraine.

22:56In fact, in my discussion of my relationship with Eastern Europe, I didn't mention Putin. I also didn't say Ukraine, which I went to for the first time in 1990 and have been going ever since. And fortunately, we agree with each other. And the arguments that he is now making are ones I've been making for a long time. So I don't really feel that I have to tailor what I say to him. But do you think you get attacked more? So, for example, I think you're on one of the lists of people who you're officially defined as a Russophobe. by the Kremlin. Yeah, I think I've been banned from going to Russia. Which actually, it's weird when that happened, it made me sort of sad.

23:29I used to spend a lot of time in Russia now. I'm also banned. You're also banned. Oh, well, that's it. You cannot go together. We cannot spend holidays in Siberia together. But I did spend a lot of time there at one point, so it's sad. Yeah, I probably attract more anger and, you know, hatred and trolling because of that, yeah. And people attack me for it and so on. But it feels to me that because I had carved out my position on these matters for the last decade. It doesn't bother you. It doesn't bother him. I'm trying to think. There may be other unrelated issues where I wouldn't say anything, but off the top of my head, I'm not thinking of it.