This is fresh air, I'm Terry Gross.

In the battle between autocracy and democracy,

between dictatorship and freedom,

Ukraine is now the front line, and our front line,

writes my guest Ann Applebaum.

She's a journalist and historian

who has spent the past few years writing about

authoritarian governments focusing on

eastern European countries and their leaders' ties

to Vladimir Putin.

She's been writing about Russia's invasion of Ukraine

for the Atlantic where she's a staff writer.

She's also written about the history of conflicts

between the Kremlin and Ukraine.

Her book, Red Famine, is about the famine in Ukraine

that was created by Stalin in the early 1930s

in his attempt to destroy the Ukrainian national movement.

Nearly four million Ukrainians died.

Soviet secret police simultaneously carried out

mass arrests of Ukrainian intellectual,

cultural, religious, and political leaders

and exiled many of them to remote parts of the Soviet Union.

...