Laurien Crump awarded George Blazyca Prize for best book in East European studies

Dr. Laurien Crump (History of International Relations) is awarded the George Blazyca Prize for her monograph The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered: International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955-1969, that was published in 2015.

George Blazyca Prize

The George Blazyca Prize is offered annually by the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES) for scholarly work of high quality in East European studies. The judges agreed that Crump's monograph offers 'original and nuanced insight', and that it is a 'thoroughly pleasurable read'.

The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered

The Warsaw Pact is generally regarded as a mere instrument of Soviet power. In the 1960s the alliance nevertheless evolved into a multilateral alliance, in which the non-Soviet Warsaw Pact members gained considerable scope for manoeuvre. In The Warsaw Pact Reconsidered. International Relations in Eastern Europe, 1955-1969, Crump examines to what extent the Warsaw Pact inadvertently provided its members with an opportunity to assert their own interests, emancipate themselves from the Soviet grip, and influence Soviet bloc policy.