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Emeritus Professor George Sanford, 1943-2021

Emeritus Professor George Sanford with Ukeugenia Maresch (Association of Katyn Families in the UK) at the Polish Embassy in 2015 on the 75th anniversary of the Katyn Massacres Tim Bucknall, with the kind permission of the Kresy-Siberia Foundation

5 May 2021

George Sanford, Emeritus Professor of East European Politics, died on 25 February in retirement in Torquay after a long illness. His colleague Professor Mark Wickham-Jones offers a remembrance.

George was associated with the University of Bristol throughout most of his academic life: he studied history as an undergraduate in the early 1960s before coming back as a lecturer in 1966. He was a scholar of the classic sort: his research was empirically grounded on the basis of careful and often painstaking fieldwork.  

By the time he retired in 2008, George had authored eight books and numerous articles. Many of these dealt with the development of the communist regime in Poland after 1945, a subject on which he was an acknowledged expert: Jerry Hough’s “pluralist” model of the Soviet system was an important influence upon him. His output included Polish Communism in Crisis (1983), Military Rule in Poland(1986) and Democratic Government in Poland (2002). But he also tackled historical themes with Poland: The Conquest of History (1999). 

George ended his career on a high note: his last and most cited book was an archivally based account of the Soviet massacre of Polish army officers at Katyn in 1940 (Katyn and the Soviet Massacre of 1940: Truth, Justice and Memory (2009)). In his retirement he continued to take an active interest in politics, and in particular questions of English identity and post-communist developments in Poland and the wider region. 

George came from a Polish emigré family: born in Alexandria, Egypt, he came to Britain with his parents after 1945. This background contributed to his often acute ability to analyse British life and politics, not least its class system and sense of exceptionalism, from his own quite distinctive angle. As a scholar, he made regular return trips to Poland for fieldwork, on one of which he met his wife, AdrianaAlongside his research, he was also Acting Head of the Department of Politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period of some expansion in terms of staff appointments and student numbers 

For a time, George was also active in Labour Party politics, harbouring parliamentary ambitions: he was runner-up in Dorset West in 1970 (albeit by some distance) and he came close to selection for the Labour seat of Thurrock in a 1976 by-election. 

 

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