On 29 March Gwendolyn Sasse was awarded the Alexander Nove Prize, the annual book prize of the British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies (BASEES), for her monograph `The Crimea Question: Identity, Transition, and Conflict` (Harvard University Press, 2007).
Historians often find it difficult enough to explain why conflicts happen: it is even more challenging - not to mention risky - to try to explain why a widely expected conflict has not in fact occurred. This is the challenge that Gwendolyn Sasse boldly tackles in her fine study of `The Crimea Question`. After the break-up of the USSR in 1991 many experts predicted violent confrontation in Crimea, which had been transferred from Russia to Ukraine in 1954, and where the large majority of the population was ethnically Russian. The return of the Crimean Tatars, deported in 1944, added to the ethnic complexity of the situation.
In order to explain why the potential conflict did not materialise, Sasse examines the history and culture of Crimea through the tsarist and Soviet periods, before providing a detailed analysis of the regional, national and international politics of the post-Soviet years. She concludes that the `process` of constitution-making, rather than the actual institutioanl `outcome` (Crimea`s autonomy status within Ukraine) was the key determinant of conflict prevention. Sasse deals with highly complex issues with great skill and authority. Her research is appropriately informed by a wide range of methodologies, and she develops her arguments clearly and persuasively. The book displays considerable theoretical sophistication, but remains accessible to the general reader. It makes a significant contribution to scholarship, and is a worthy winner of the Nove Prize.` (BASEES Awards Committee, 2009).
Gwendolyn Sasse is University Reader in the Comparative Politics of Central and Eastern Europe, Professorial Fellow, Nuffield College.
