2024 Recipient

Victor Petrov

Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age behind the Iron Curtain

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.  

Winner: Victor Petrov, Balkan Cyberia: Cold War Computing, Bulgarian Modernization, and the Information Age behind the Iron Curtain (MIT Press, 2023)

Bringing together the complex histories of the maturation and fall of socialism and the rise of the information economy, Victor Petrov delivers one of the most original recent accounts in East European History. In pursuing hard currency and prestige in the 1960s, socialist Bulgaria decided to invest in the computer industry. As a result, a new technical class of experts emerged. They enjoyed both domestic political support and rare access to international networks of expertise, and—over time—translated their computing work into reform thinking, as well as professional capital that was especially useful during the transition from socialism. Petrov understands socialist practices deeply, sees Cold War-era international rivalries with fresh eyes, and makes rich arguments grounded in a diverse range of literatures that have been waiting for the right author to be brought together. Superbly researched, Balkan Cyberia elevates a local story about the socialist uses of cyberspeak into an important argument about the unintended outcomes of utopian automation, adding a compelling case study to histories of the surprising international reach of small states. As techno-utopian visions of social order proliferate in our time, Balkan Cyberia demonstrates the need to bring history into public discussions of technical hubris and computing’s role in our lives.  

Co-Winner: Louis Howard Porter

Prize Committee: Elidor Mëhilli (chair), Lorenz Luthi, and Milada Vachudova