Anne Applebaum is a first-rate historian, a very good writer and a campaigner for human rights and democracy. And this is a very good and important book.

But — while its description of the evils of the corrupt authoritarian regimes Applebaum surveys (including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and many others) is comprehensive, the final section is weak. How to solve the problem of the rise of a network of such states? Applebaum urges the democratic countries to more effectively prevent wealthy individuals from those autocratic regimes from purchasing real estate, or put their ill-gotten wealth into bank accounts. And a few other ideas as well.

There’s almost nothing about hugely increasing defence budgets as most European countries are now doing.

And nothing at all about promoting what are probably the largest civil society organisations — ones which are capable of seriously challenging autocratic regimes. And by that I mean: trade unions. Though Applebaum makes reference to Solidarnosc (including a discussion of its logo), she doesn’t apply its lessons to countries like Iran, where worker unrest is genuine, mass strikes take place, and the regime fears a mobilised, angry working class more than almost anything else.

There’s a reason why dictators like Lukashenko in Belarus have spent so much effort and time in crushing the country’s independent trade unions, and why his fellow autocrats in North Korea, Syria or Saudi Arabia make sure none ever come into existence.

Here is how George Orwell put it in 1984: “If there was hope, it must lie in the Proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses … could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.” That was true when he wrote the book and it is true today. There is no way to confront the problem of autocratic regimes without putting the “proles” front and centre.