2018 Recipient

The Marshall D. Shulman Book Prize, established in 1987 and sponsored by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph dealing with the international relations, foreign policy, or foreign-policy decision-making of any of the states of the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe published in the previous calendar year. The prize is dedicated to the encouragement of high-quality studies of the international behavior of the countries of the former Communist Bloc.

Winner: Elidor Mëhilli
Title: From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Cornell University Press)

This highly engaging study draws on archival evidence from half a dozen countries to reveal the twists, turns, complexities and brutalities of Albania’s experience through World War II and after. Recounting its annexation by Italy, its occupation by Italy and Germany, and its successive alignments with Yugoslavia, the USSR and finally the People’s Republic of China, From Stalin to Mao explains Albania’s shifting alliances in the international system not as a result of nationalist striving, but rather as primarily a strategy of defending the country’s independence against overpowering patrons. The book is at once a deep exploration into the intriguing and harrowing case of Albania while at the same time providing broader arguments about the nature of Soviet socialism and its idiosyncratic adaptation in different national contexts. Even more broadly, From Stalin to Mao is about how small states continually navigate, succumb to and importantly also at times subvert the great powers in their midst, revealing the particular dilemmas and opportunities that small states face, given that they are nearly always subject to greater powers. Vividly written, From Stalin to Mao combines the macro-historical with documentation of highly personal and individual accounts that shed new light on the veritable upheaval unleashed by the Cold War, with particularly harsh consequences for, as the book points out, “a largely illiterate society.” This is a definitive study on a critical case.

Honorable Mention: Borislav Chernev