The Polly Corrigan Book Prize committee is delighted to announce that the winner of the Prize for 2022 is:

Molly Pucci, Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020)

Security Empire is an impressive achievement. In it, Pucci constructs a history of the establishment, evolution, and practices of communist secret police forces in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and eastern Germany/the German Democratic Republic during the period from 1945 to 1954. Security Empire's comparative analysis of national approaches to intelligence adds significantly to our understanding of how secret police forces developed across post-war Eastern Europe, and why they developed in the form they did. Based on multi-archival research in the Czech Republic, Poland, Germany, and the United States, Pucci demonstrates that assumptions about the application of a standard Soviet model in the creation of secret police forces in the aftermath of the Second World War need to be revised to take account of considerable diversity in motivation, understanding, and practice across the Eastern Bloc. Based on extensive research in multiple languages, rich in detail, and presenting the thoughts and words of secret police officers themselves, this book transforms our understanding of the early history of communist secret police forces in Eastern Europe.

In this roundtable event, Dr Molly Pucci, panellists from the committee for the 2022 Polly Corrigan Book Prize and academics in intelligence studies will discuss the themes and findings that emerge from Dr Pucci's prize-winning book, probing deeper into the research and reflecting on the process of this project. The event will conclude with a short Q&A and a drinks reception which all attendees are welcome to attend.

This event is co-organised by:

WIN-Women in Intelligence Network

INS - Intelligence and National Security (published by Taylor & Francis)

KISG - King's Intelligence and Security Group.

Prize-winner's Roundtable: The 2022 Polly Corrigan Book Prize