Anna Mazurkiewicz Receives OAH'S 2019 Willi Paul Adams Award for her Book

Barbara Kalabińska, author of index, and Prof. Mazurkiewicz with her award

During its annual meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) presented Prof. Anna Mazurkiewicz, University of Gdańsk, with their prestigious 2019 Willi Paul Adams Award, which is given every two years for the best book on American history published in a language other than English.

The book, Uchodźcy polityczni z Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej w amerykańskiej polityce zimnowojennej, 1948–1954 [Political Exiles from East Central Europe in American Cold War Politics, 1948–1954] was published by the Institute of National Remembrance and University of Gdańsk. This is an impressively detailed study of the origins and dynamics of U.S. involvement on behalf of East Central European exiles in the early years of the Cold War. Based on transatlantic archival work and covering exile groups such as Albanians, Romanians, Hungarians, Poles, and Slovaks, the book’s signal contribution is to join the literature of U.S. Cold War policy and propaganda formation with the literature on exile politics in these important but understudied regions of the Soviet bloc.

Prof. Earl Lewis, OAH President presents the award to Prof. Anna Mazurkiewicz

Mazurkiewicz presents a nuanced analysis of the two-way relationship between East Central European exiles and U.S. Cold War policy makers, especially through formation of the Free Europe Committee, an anticommunist Central Intelligence Agency–supported organization that established Radio Free Europe and served American propaganda interests. Documents from exiles and interviews with them demonstrate the compromises involved in becoming tethered to the U.S. propaganda mission and give voice to their complex and often-equivocal response to the partnership. The author concludes that the East Central Europeans’ integration in the Free Europe Committee became a model for U.S. relations with anticommunist exile groups from other regions of the world. Because exile and refugee politics are often tied to U.S. policy makers’ interest in regime change elsewhere, Mazurkiewicz’s history will remain a meaningful reference point for the present.

The award was presented on April 5 by OAH’s 2018–19 President Earl Lewis and 2019–20 President Joanne Meyerowitz. For more information, visit oah.org or call 812.855.7311.