Pushkin House Russian Book Prize

Annual English-language book prize for non-fiction writing about Russia From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pushkin House Book Prize is an annual book prize, awarded to the best non-fiction writing on Russia in the English language. The prize was inaugurated in 2013. The prize amount as of 2020 has been £10,000. The advisory board for the prize is made up of Russia experts including Rodric Braithwaite, Andrew Jack, Bridget Kendall, Andrew Nurnberg, Marc Polonsky, and Douglas Smith.[1]

Honorees

More information Year, Author(s) ...
Pushkin House Russian Book Prize winners and shortlists
Year Author(s) Title Publisher Result Ref.
2013[a] Douglas Smith Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Farrar, Straus and Giroux Winner [2]
Anne Applebaum Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 Allen Lane Shortlist [2]
Masha Gessen The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin Riverhead Books Shortlist [2]
Thane Gustafson Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia Harvard University Press Shortlist [2]
Donald Raleigh Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation Oxford University Press Shortlist [2]
Karl Schlögel Moscow 1937 Polity Shortlist [2]
2014[b] Catherine Merridale Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History Allen Lane Winner [3]
Vladimir Alexandrov The Black Russian Head of Zeus Shortlist [3]
Sheila Fitzpatrick A Spy in the Archives: a Memoir of Cold War Russia I.B. Tauris Shortlist [3]
Owen Matthews Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America Bloomsbury Shortlist [3]
Anya von Bremzen Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking Transworld Shortlist [3]
Stephen Walsh Mussorgsky and His Circle: a Russian Musical Adventure Faber and Faber Shortlist [3]
2015[c] Serhii Plokhy The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union Oneworld Publications Winner [4]
Peter Finn and Petra Couvée The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle over a Forbidden Book Harvill Secker/Vintage Books Shortlist [4]
Jacek Hugo-Bader, trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones Kolyma Diaries: A Journey into Russia’s Haunted Hinterland Portobello Books Shortlist [4]
Catriona Kelly St Petersburg: Shadows of the Past Yale University Press Shortlist [4]
Stephen Kotkin Stalin: Paradoxes of Power, 1878–1928 Penguin Press Shortlist [4]
Peter Pomerantsev Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Faber and Faber Shortlist [4]
2016[d] Dominic Lieven Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia Penguin Press Winner [5]
Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.) Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s 1932-43 Yale University Press Shortlist [5]
Oleg Khlevniuk, trans. by Nora Seligman Favorov Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator[e] Yale University Press Shortlist [5]
Bobo Lo Russia and the New World Disorder Brookings Institution Shortlist [5]
Alfred Rieber Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia Cambridge University Press Shortlist [5]
Robert Service The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 Pan Macmillan Shortlist [5]
2017[f] Rosalind Blakesley The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia 1757-1881 Yale University Press Winner [6]
Daniel Beer The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars Allen Lane Shortlist [6]
Anne Garrels Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia Farrar, Straus and Giroux Shortlist [6]
Simon Sebag Montefiore The Romanovs: 1613–1918 Orion Shortlist [6]
Simon Morrison Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Tsars to Today Fourth Estate Shortlist [6]
Teffi, trans. by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg with an introduction by Edyth C. Haber Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea[g] Pushkin Press Shortlist [6]
2018[h] Alexis Peri The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad Harvard University Press Winner [7]
Rodric Braithwaite Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation Profile Books Shortlist [7]
Victoria Lomasko, trans. from Russian by Thomas Campbell Other Russias[i] Penguin (first pub. by N+1) Shortlist [7]
Olivier Rolin, trans. from French by Ros Schwartz Stalin’s Meteorologist: One Man’s Untold Story of Love, Life, and Death Penguin Shortlist [7]
Yuri Slezkine The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution Princeton University Press Shortlist [7]
William Taubman Gorbachev: His Life and Times Simon & Schuster Shortlist [7]
2019[j] Serhii Plokhy Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe Penguin Winner [8]
Taylor Downing 1983: The World at the Brink Little, Brown Book Group Shortlist [8]
Mark Galeotti The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia Yale University Press Shortlist [8]
Eleonory Gilburd To See Paris And Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture Harvard University Press Shortlist [8]
Ben Macintyre The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War Viking Shortlist [8]
Katja Petrowskaja Maybe Esther: A Family Story 4th Estate Shortlist [8]
2020[k] Sergei Medvedev The Return of the Russian Leviathan Polity Winner [9][10]
Brian Boeck Stalin's Scribe: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov Pegasus Books Shortlist [9]
Kate Brown Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future W. W. Norton & Company Shortlist [9]
Bathsheba Demuth Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait W. W. Norton & Company Shortlist [9]
Owen Matthews An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent Bloomsbury Shortlist [9]
Joan Neuberger This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia Cornell University Press Shortlist [9]
2021[l] Archie Brown The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan, and Thatcher, and the End of the Cold War Oxford University Press Winner
Catherine Belton Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West Picador Shortlist
Evgeny Dobrenko Late Stalinism: The Aesthetics of Politics Yale University Press Shortlist
Jonathan Schneer The Lockhart Plot: Murder, Betrayal and Counter-Revolution in Lenin's Russia Oxford University Press Shortlist
Andrei Zorin Leo Tolstoy Reaktion Books Shortlist
Katherine Zubovich Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin's Capital Princeton University Press Shortlist
2022[m] Mary Sarotte Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate Yale University Press Winner [12][13]
Frank Billé and Caroline Humphrey On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border Harvard University Press Shortlist [14]
Jan Matti Dollbaum, Morvan Lallouet and Ben Noble Navalny: Putin's Nemesis, Russia's Future? Oxford University Press Shortlist
Timothy Frye Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia Princeton University Press Shortlist [15]
Thane Gustafson Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change Harvard University Press Shortlist [16]
Maria Stepanova In Memory of Memory New Directions Publishing Shortlist [17]
Deyan Sudjic Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow MIT Press Shortlist [18]
Lucy Ward The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus Oneworld Publications Shortlist [19]
Elizabeth Wilson Playing with Fire: The Story of Maria Yudina- Pianist in Stalin’s Russia Yale University Press Shortlist [20]
Vladislav Zubok Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union Yale University Press Shortlist [21]
2023[n] Owen Matthews Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine Mudlark Winner [22]
Ryan Tucker Jones Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling University of Chicago Press Shortlist [23][24]
Jade McGlynn Russia’s War Polity Shortlist [23][24]
Olga Petri Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg Cornell University Press Shortlist [23][24]
Natasha Lance Rogoff Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Shortlist [23][24]
Tricia Starks Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR Cornell University Press Shortlist [23][24]
2024[o] Elena Kostyuchenko I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko Bodley Head Winner [25][26]
Julie A. Cassiday Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism University of Wisconsin Press Shortlist [26]
Dan Healey The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin's Labour Camps Yale University Press Shortlist [26]
Tom Parfitt High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia's Haunted Hinterland Headline Book Publishing Shortlist [26]
Serhii Plokhy The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History Allen Lane Shortlist [26]
Laur Vallikivi Words and Silences: Nenets Reindeer Herders and Russian Evangelical Missionaries in the Post-Soviet Arctic Indiana University Press Shortlist [26]
2025[p] Benjamin Nathans To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement Princeton University Press Winner [27][28]
Howard Amos Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire Bloomsbury Continuum Shortlist [28]
Lucy Ash The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin Icon Books Shortlist [28]
Alexei Navalny, translated by Arch Tait & Stephen Dalziel Patriot Bodley Head Shortlist [28]
Sergey Radchenko To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power Cambridge University Press Shortlist [28]
Donald Rayfield 'A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’ : The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate Reaktion Books Shortlist [28]
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Notes

  1. [a]
    The 2013 judges were Sir Rodric Braithwaite, A.D. Miller, Rachel Polonsky, Lord Robert Skidelsky, and Dmitri V. Trenin.
  2. [b]
    The 2014 judging panel was chaired by Dr. Rowan Williams and included Boris Akunin, Viv Groskop, Catriona Kelly, and Douglas Smith.
  3. [c]
    The 2015 judges were Lord Browne of Madingley, Dmitry Bykov, Varya Gornostaeva, Bridget Kendall, and Catherine Merridale.
  4. [d]
    The 2016 judges were Geoffrey Hosking, Anne McElvoy, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, and Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill.
  5. [e]
    Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator was named the Best Russian Book in Translation.
  6. [f]
    The 2017 judging panel was chaired by Simon Franklin and included Anne Applebaum, Petr Aven, Dominic Lieven, and Charlotte Hobson.
  7. [g]
    Memories was named the year's best Russian book in translation.
  8. [h]
    The 2018 judging panel was chaired by Nick Clegg and included Rosalind Blakesley, Oleg Budnitsky, Dervla Murphy, and John Thornhill.
  9. [i]
    Other Russias was named the year's best Russian book in translation.
  10. [j]
    The 2019 judging panel was chaired by Sergey Guriyev and included Rachel Campbell-Johnson, Alexander Drozdov, Alexis Peri, and Andrei Zorin.
  11. [k]
    The 2020 judges were Serhii Plokhy, Celestine Bohlen, Julia Safronova, and Richard Wright.
  12. [l]
    The 2021 judges were Fiona Hill, Declan Donnellan, Sergei Medvedev, George Robertson, and Maria Stepanova.
  13. [m]
    The 2022 judges were Evgenia Arbugaeva, Baroness Deborah Bull, Archie Brown (historian), Dmitry Glukhovsky, Ekaterina Schulmann.[11]
  14. [n]
    The 2023 judges were Ekaterina Schulmann, Philip Bullock, Masha Gessen, Alexander Rodnyansky, and Mary Elise Sarotte.
  15. [o]
    The 2024 judges were Philip Bullock, Ruth Maclennan, Anna Narinskaya, and Gulnaz Sharafutdinova.
  16. [p]
    The 2025 judges were Gulnaz Sharafutdinova, Tony Barber, Polina Barskova, Laurie Bristow and Elena Kostyuchenko .

References

External links

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