THE BEST NON-FICTION WRITING
ABOUT RUSSIA
The annual Pushkin House Book Prize highlights books which combine excellence in research with readability, providing us with a better understanding of Russia's history, culture and its people.
Pushkin House Book Prize 2024
Submissions open: Guidelines for Authors and Publishers
We are delighted to announce that submissions for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2024 are now open!
The Pushkin House Book Prize, created in 2013, showcases high quality new non-fiction books published in English that examine Russian culture, history and politics. The Prize looks beyond the borders of modern Russia, to include the experience of those whose native lands were affected by the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The Prize rewards books that are well-written, well-researched and accessible to the non-specialist reader. The Prize welcomes a thematically broad range of books and recognises those in the early stages of their careers as well as well-established authors. Translations from other languages can be considered.
A shortlist of six books will be announced in the spring, followed by an awards ceremony and dinner in the summer where the winner of the Prize will be announced.
Publishers and authors are now invited to use this form to submit their entries. Books should be readable, well-researched and accessible to the non-specialist reader. The eligibility and submission guidelines are as follows:
Full-length, new non-fiction titles by living authors focussed on Russia and/or territories formerly known as the Russian Empire and/or the Soviet Union, with first UK or English language publication dates between 1 April 2023 and 31 March 2024.
The deadline for submissions is 15 December 2023.
Each entry will comprise:
a completed entry form
a £25 entry fee per publisher / per imprint
an electronic version of the book, either the proof or final version (for distribution to the Book Prize judges only) and the book jacket image.
If requested in due course, seven physical copies of each entry must be submitted. If finished physical copies are not available, bound proofs may be submitted in the first instance, provided that they are of good quality and that their content reflects that of the final book, and final copies should be sent in as soon as they are available.
If a book is shortlisted, publishers may be required to provide further copies gratis for promotional purposes. No copies of books provided by publishers will be returned to the publishers.
Publishers and authors of shortlisted and winning titles agree to help promote their Pushkin House Book Prize status on social media, jacket cover references and at relevant events.
Contacts:
If you have any questions about the Prize or eligibility, please email bookprize@pushkinhouse.org.uk
The Prize is generously supported by Douglas Smith (author and winner of the inaugural award in 2013), Stephanie Ellis-Smith and the Polonsky Foundation.
Pushkin House Book Prize 2023
THURSDAY, 15 JUNE 2023
Owen Matthews, a journalist with over 25 years’ experience covering Russia, has won the annual Pushkin House Book Prize of £10,000 for Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine (HarperCollins).
Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine explores the historical roots of the conflict, from the Covid bubble when Russian president Vladimir Putin conceived his invasion plans to the inner circle around Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Using the accounts of current and former Kremlin insiders, the testimony of captured Russian soldiers and on-the-ground reporting from Russia and Ukraine, Overreach tells the story not only of the war’s causes, but how the first six months unfolded.
The judges also praised Jade McGlynn’s Russia’s War for her original, well argued and deeply researched analysis. Russia’s War explores the attitudes behind the Russian majority backing for the invasion, drawing on media analysis and interviews with ordinary citizens, officials and foreign-policy elites in Russia and Ukraine.
Elena Sudakova, Executive Director of Pushkin House said: "With the Pushkin House Book Prize we aim to present to a broad public books that will stimulate urgently-needed reflection and discussion, supported by scholarly research and evidence contributing to open discourse. Overreach fits that role extremely well."
Ekaterina Schulmann, chair of the judges, said: “Overreach is an impressive achievement: a work of accessible history, with very vivid writing, depth and historical sweep, which helps explain the context of Russia’s current war.”
Thursday, 27 April 2023
PUSHKIN HOUSE ANNOUNCES SHORTLIST FOR THE 11TH PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE
The books shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2023 illustrate the importance of the valuable insights that academics offer and the contribution that they make to our understanding of Russia’s complex culture, history and people, particularly during our current realities since 24 February 2022.
Titles on this year’s shortlist provide insight into the start of the Russo-Ukrainian war; post-Soviet societal tensions and their complicated relationship with the West; illicit gay relationships and friendships in Russia during the fin-de-siècle; the illegal Soviet campaign that almost led to the extinction of endangered whale populations; a comprehensive study of Soviet tobacco habits; in-depth analysis of the Russian worldview of the current war in Ukraine; and the cultural perils of bringing Sesame Street to Russia.
The 2023 shortlisted titles are:
Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia by Natasha Lance Rogoff (read Q&A with the author)
Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin’s War Against Ukraine by Owen Matthews (read Q&A with the author)
Russia’s War by Jade McGlynn (read Q&A with the author)
Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg by Olga Petri (read Q&A with the author)
Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR by Tricia Starks (read Q&A with the author)
Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling by Ryan Tucker Jones (read Q&A with the author)
Tickets are now on sale for this year’s Book Prize Award Ceremony on 15 June, where the £10,000 prize will be awarded to the overall winner by a distinguished jury. The ceremony will take place at Pushkin House and will be hosted by Andrew Jack, founder of the prize, and Elena Sudakova, Executive Director of Pushkin House. The ceremony will take place with the backdrop of Katya Muromtseva's exhibition, with the artist present, and will include a live artistic performance and piano recital. We will also be serving a standing buffet dinner and drinks throughout the evening, all of which is included in the ticket price.
thursday, 2 march 2023
PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE 2023 JUDGES ANNOUNCED
We are pleased to announce the distinguished judges who will make up the panel for this year’s Prize:
Ekaterina Schulmann is the Chair of the judges panel. She is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Foundation in Berlin. She was previously an associate professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Her writing includes Legislation as a Political Process (2014) and Not Just a Rubber Stamp (2018).
Philip Bullock is Professor of Russian Literature and Music at the University of Oxford, Fellow and Tutor in Russian at Wadham College, and a former academic director of the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). He received the 2009 Philip Leverhulme Prize for Modern Languages.
Masha Gessen is a Russian-American journalist and author. They are a staff writer for The New Yorker and a professor of writing at Bard College. Gessen is a recipient of the National Book Award for The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (2017), a Leipzig Book Fair Prize for European Understanding, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship and many other prizes.
Alexander Rodnyansky is a Ukrainian film producer whose projects with director Andrey Zvyagintsev include Elena (2011), Leviathan (2014) and Loveless (2017); Beanpole (2019) with Kantemir Balagov and Unclenching the Fists (2021) with Kira Kovalenko. He was nominated for the Academy Award twice, won the Golden Globe for Leviathan, the Grand Prix of Un Certain Regard for Unclenching the Fists and the César Award for Loveless.
Professor Mary Elise Sarotte is a leading expert on foreign policy and the inaugural holder of the Kravis Chair at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington, DC. She won the 2022 Pushkin House Book Prize for Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Stalemate (Yale University Press).
Pushkin House Book Prize 2022
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
M. E. Sarotte, a leading expert on foreign policy, has won the annual pushkin house book prize of £10,000 for Not One iNch: America, Russia, and the making of the Post-cold War Stalemate (YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS).
Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate is a revealing account of America’s relations with the new post-Cold War democracies of East and Central Europe, with its older European allies, and, in particular with Russia – a relationship that went so badly awry and sowed the seeds of the tensions that shape today's world.
The judges praised all the shortlisted works and especially highly commended Maria Stepanova, author of In Memory of Memory, a beautifully written reflection on the Soviet experience of individual families, powerfully translated by Sasha Dugdale.
The tenth anniversary year of the Pushkin House Book Prize takes place at a time of seismic shifts that have changed attitudes in and towards Russia. The Prize was created to highlight, reward and encourage public understanding and intelligent writing about history, societal developments and culture within and beyond Russia.
Pushkin House feels that it is our responsibility to support all thinkers and creatives who are able to contribute to our shared understanding of the world in which we have found ourselves after 24 February 2022.
To mark the Prize this year, and recognising the importance of the valuable insights that research and academics offer to study Russia at this pivotal moment in history, the judges exceptionally shortlisted ten books rather than the usual six. The decision reflects on the importance of discussion around all the complexities and contradictions of Russia’s complicated history and culture.
The 2022 shortlisted titles were:
In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale
On the Edge: Life Along the Russia-China Border by Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey
Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? by Jan Matti Dollbaum, Morvan Lallouet and Ben Noble
Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia by Timothy Frye
Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change by Thane Gustafson
Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by M. E. Sarotte
Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow by Deyan Sudjic
The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus by Lucy Ward
Playing with Fire: The Story of Maria Yudina, Pianist in Stalin’s Russia by Elizabeth Wilson
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok
Ekaterina Schulmann, spokesperson for the 2022 judges, said: "Mary Sarotte's book presents an in-depth documentation and compelling narrative of East-West diplomacy and relationships. The story that she tells is at once historically significant and uncomfortably near. In 2022, it sometimes reads like one of those works that describe the events preceding World War I. Sarotte bravely underlines possible key historical figures and moments when history might have evolved towards another reality. The significance of Sarotte's voice and her careful analysis gives us, readers, an opportunity to at least begin to understand how we got to where we find ourselves now."
Marc Polonsky, managing trustee of The Polonsky Foundation, co-funder of the prize, said: “At this time, a deep understanding and proper analysis of Russia in all its complexity – both its past and present – are more crucial than ever. The Pushkin House Book Prize has again brought to the fore books that shed important light on this. Congratulations to the worthy winner selected from such a competitive field."
Douglas Smith, who with his wife Stephanie Ellis-Smith, helps fund the prize, said: “Mary Sarotte’s Not One Inch is not only the book for our turbulent times, but will be long read by everyone seeking to understand the origins of the post-Cold War world. It's irreplaceable work.”
Andrew Jack, founder of the prize, said “Never in the history of the prize has high quality writing to understand Russia been more important – or better supplied than in this year’s offerings.”
MONDAY, 6 JUNE 2022
PUSHKIN HOUSE ANNOUNCES SHORTLIST FOR ITS 10TH PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE
Titles on this year’s Pushkin House Book Prize shortlist provide insight into cultural life under Stalinism, Soviet family history, climate change, health and life on the Russia-China border as well as the background to the war in Ukraine. The tenth anniversary year of the Prize takes place at a time of seismic shifts that have changed attitudes in and towards Russia. To mark the decade of the Prize, and recognising the importance of the valuable insights that research and scholars offer into the Russian speaking world at this pivotal moment, the judges have exceptionally shortlisted ten books rather than the usual six.
Four of the books offer direct context on the history and politics of the country in the years leading up to the invasion, helping to promote public understanding and informed debate about Russia’s past, present and future, in line with the Prize’s long-term mission. The £10,000 prize will be awarded to the overall winner in September by a distinguished jury.
Ekaterina Schulmann, one of the 2022 judges, said: “In one of the darkest years in post-WWII world history, I think it is particularly honourable of Pushkin House to keep rewarding painstaking scholarship and dedicated studies of Russian history, societal development and culture that are both fundamental and approachable. These books reflect the varieties and revel in the richness of human experience and endeavour that are so easy to lose sight of but should be preserved as an integral part of our shared humanity. The Pushkin House Book Prize is faithful to its mission of fostering and encouraging deeper understanding of the immense complexities of cultures within and beyond Russia.”
The 2022 shortlisted titles are:
On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border by Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey (read Q&A with Caroline Humphrey)
Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future? by Jan Matti Dollbaum, Morvan Lallouet and Ben Noble (read Q&A with the authors)
Weak Strongman: The limits of power in Putin’s Russia by Timothy Frye (read Q&A with Timothy Frye)
Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change by Thane Gustafson (read Q&A with Thane Gustafson)
Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate by Mary Sarotte (read Q&A with Mary Sarotte)
In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova, translated by Sasha Dugdale (read Q&A with Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale)
Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow by Deyan Sudjic (read Q&A with Deyan Sudjic)
The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great defied a deadly virus by Lucy Ward (read Q&A with Lucy Ward)
Playing with Fire: The Story of Maria Yudina, Pianist in Stalin’s Russia by Elizabeth Wilson (read Q&A with Elizabeth Wilson)
Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav Zubok (read Q&A with Vladislav Zubok)
Read the summaries of the shortlisted books here.
This year’s judges are: Evgenia Arbugaeva, photographer, National Geographic Society Storytelling Fellow and recipient of the ICP Infinity and Leica Oskar Barnack awards; Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and the author of many books including The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher and the End of the Cold War, which won the 2021 Pushkin House Book Prize; Dmitry Glukhovsky, a multilingual journalist and author of the cult science fiction series Metro and the critically acclaimed Text; Ekaterina Schulmann, an associate professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences, Bosch Academy Richard von Weizsäcker fellow and political commentator; and Baroness Deborah Bull, writer, broadcaster, cultural commentator and Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords and Vice President (Communities & National Engagement) at King’s College London.
Douglas Smith, winner of the first Pushkin House Book Prize and a funder of the prize with his wife Stephanie Ellis-Smith, said: “At a moment when the need to know and understand Russia could not be greater, the expanded shortlist for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize marvellously captures the intelligence and knowledge of today’s leading experts. The range of subjects is expansive, the insight is deep. Anyone seeking to make sense of the country will want to read these books.”
Marc Polonsky, managing trustee of The Polonsky Foundation, co-funder of the prize, said: “The shortlist demonstrates once again the calibre and range of contemporary writing about the Russian speaking world. In these troubled times it is all the more crucial to understand the complex realities of Russia’s history and what is going on today.”
The winner of the 2022 Prize will be announced at a special ceremony at the London Library on the 28th of September 2022.
Tickets to the ceremony are now available to purchase on our website.
For press and marketing enquiries please contact Eugenia Ellanskaya.
27 JANUARY 2022
2022 PUSHKIN HOUSE BOOK PRIZE JUDGES ANNOUNCED
2022 marks the tenth anniversary of our annual Pushkin House Book Prize for the best current non-fiction writing on Russia published in the English language. This year’s edition reviews books published between 1 January 2021 and 30 June 2022. As we finalise our celebratory programming, we are already delighted to announce the judges who will be selecting the best works this year:
Evgenia Arbugaeva is a photographer whose work often explores her homeland of the Russian Arctic. She is a National Geographic Society Storytelling Fellow, and a recipient of the ICP Infinity and Leica Oskar Barnack awards.
Baroness Deborah Bull is a Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords and Vice President (Communities & National Engagement) at King's College London. She is a writer, broadcaster and cultural commentator and danced with The Royal Ballet for 20 years before becoming Creative Director at the Royal Opera House.
Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and the author of many books including The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher and the End of the Cold War, which won the 2021 Pushkin House Book Prize.
Dmitry Glukhovsky is a multilingual author and journalist including for Novaya Gazeta and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. His books include the cult science fiction series Metro and the critically acclaimed Text.
Ekaterina Schulmann is an associate professor at the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences. Her writing includes Legislation as a Political Process and Not just a rubber stamp.
The Prize was created to highlight, reward and encourage public understanding and intelligent writing about the Russian-speaking world. It assesses books published in English, but translations from other languages, including Russian, are encouraged and actively sought.
The Pushkin Prize is generously supported by Douglas Smith (author and winner of the inaugural award in 2013) and Stephanie Ellis-Smith, and the Polonsky Foundation.
Pushkin House Book Prize 2021
28 OCTOBER 2021
Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, has won the ninth annual Pushkin House Book Prize of £10,000 for The Human Factor: Gorbachev, Reagan and Thatcher and the End of the Cold War (Oxford University Press).
Archie Brown’s book analyses the role of political leadership in the Cold War's ending, and shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong.
A prestigious jury unveiled its decision at an Award Dinner for the prize which recognises the best non-fiction writing published for the first time during 2020 in English about the Russian-speaking world. The award is designed to showcase, reward and encourage original, insightful and well-written books and to encourage public understanding and intelligent debate about Russia and its culture.
George Robertson (left) presenting Archie Brown with the prize on behalf of the 2021 jurors
Fiona Hill, chair of the judges, said: “Putting together the shortlist was especially difficult in a banner year for books on Russia. All are worthy of commendation and readers’ attention. The overall winner represents the very best in western scholarship on Russia and comparative politics. The Human Factor is in many respects the culmination of Archie Brown’s long and distinguished career as a scholar and a writer. It is full of a lifetime’s achievement of wisdom and insight.”
The panel of judges for 2021 was led by Fiona Hill, Robert Bosch senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, former deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council and author of the new book There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century.
Its other members were Declan Donnellan, joint founder and artistic director of the theatre company Cheek by Jowl, which established a company of Russian actors in 1999; Sergei Medvedev, writer, journalist and professor at Moscow Free University and author of The Return of the Russian Leviathan, winner of the 2020 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize; George Robertson, Labour life peer, adviser to BP and former Secretary General of NATO and UK Defence Secretary; and Maria Stepanova, poet, essayist, journalist and author of In Memory of Memory, shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize.
Douglas Smith, a funder of the prize with his wife Stephanie Ellis-Smith, said: “Archie Brown’s nuanced and convincing new book offers one of the best accounts to date of just what, and who, the key drivers were that brought about the end of the Cold War. The Human Factor is certain to become an indispensable book on late 20th-century history.”
Marc Polonsky, managing trustee of The Polonsky Foundation, co-funder of the prize, said: “Once again, the Pushkin House Book Prize has demonstrated the calibre and variety of contemporary writing about the Russian-speaking world. Congratulations to Archie Brown on being the worthy winner selected from such a competitive field."
The 2021 shortlisted titles were:
Catherine Belton, Putin’s People
Archie Brown, The Human Factor
Evgeny Dobrenko, Late Stalinism
Jonathan Schneer, The Lockhart Plot
Andrei Zorin, Leo Tolstoy
Katherine Zubovich, Moscow Monumental
In Putin’s People, Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and his entourage of KGB men seized power in Russia and built a new league of oligarchs. Through exclusive interviews with key inside players, she tells how Putin’s people conducted their relentless seizure of private companies, took over the economy, siphoned billions, blurred the lines between organised crime and political powers, shut down opponents, and then used their riches and power to extend influence in the West.
Catherine Belton is an investigative correspondent for Reuters. She worked from 2007–2013 as the Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times, and in 2016 as the newspaper’s legal correspondent. She has previously reported on Russia for Moscow Times and Business Week. In 2009, she was shortlisted for Business Journalist of the year at the British Press Awards. She lives in London.
An analysis of the role of political leadership in the Cold War’s ending, which shows why the popular view that Western economic and military strength left the Soviet Union with no alternative but to admit defeat is wrong. The Cold War got colder in the early 1980s and the relationship between the two military superpowers, the USA and the Soviet Union, each of whom had the capacity to annihilate the other, was tense. By the end of the decade, East-West relations had been utterly transformed, with most of the dividing lines – including the division of Europe – removed. Engagement between Gorbachev and Reagan was a crucial part of that process of change. More surprising was Thatcher’s role.
Archie Brown is Emeritus Professor of Politics at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the British Academy, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the author of numerous books on the former Soviet Union and its demise, including The Gorbachev Factor (1996) and The Rise and Fall of Communism (2009), both of which won both the Alec Nove Prize and the Political Studies Association’s W.J.M. Mackenzie Prize for best politics book of the year.
Evgeny Dobrenko. Late Stalinism: The Aesthetics of Politics (Yale University Press)
Translated by Jesse Savage
A nuanced historical analysis of late Stalinism organized chronologically around the main events of the period—beginning with Victory in May 1945 and concluding with the death of Stalin in March 1953. The book analyses key cultural texts to trace the emergence of an imperial Soviet consciousness that still defines the political and cultural profile of modern Russia.
Evgeny Dobrenko is professor of Russian studies at the University of Sheffield, and co-director of the Prokhorov Centre for the Study of Central and Eastern European Intellectual and Cultural History. He previously worked at Odessa State University, Moscow State University, the Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow), Duke University, Stanford University, Amherst College, the University of California and the University of Nottingham. He was awarded the Efim Etkind Prize for the best book about Russian Culture in 2012 and the AATSEEL Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship in 2019.
During the spring and summer of 1918, with World War I still undecided, British, French and American agents in Russia developed a breathtakingly audacious plan. Led by Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, a dashing, cynical, urbane 30-year-old Scot, they conspired to overthrow Lenin’s newly established Bolshevik regime, and to install one that would continue the war against Germany on the Eastern Front. But the Cheka had penetrated their organization and pounced. The Lockhart Plot was a turning point in world history, except it failed to turn.
Jonathan Schneer is Professor Emeritus at Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned his doctorate from Columbia University and taught at Yale University and the Georgia Institute of Technology. The recipient of numerous academic fellowships and awards, he has written seven previous books including The Balfour Declaration: The Origins of Arab-Israeli Conflict, (2010), which won a National Jewish Book Award.
Andrei Zorin. Leo Tolstoy (Reaktion Books)
When he arrived in Moscow in 1851, a young Leo Tolstoy set himself three immediate aims: to gamble, to marry and to obtain a post. At that time he managed only the first. The writer’s momentous life would be full of forced breaks and abrupt departures, from the death of his beloved parents to an abandonment of the social class into which he had been born. The book pieces together Tolstoy’s life, offering an account of the novelist’s deepest feelings and motives, and an interpretation of his major works, including the celebrated novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina.
Andrei Zorin is professor and chair of Russian at the University of Oxford. He is the author or co-author of several books on Russian literature and culture, including On The Periphery of Europe 1762–1825: The Self-Invention of the Russian Elite.
In the early years of the Cold War, the skyline of Moscow was forever transformed by a citywide skyscraper building project. As the steel girders of the monumental towers went up, the centuries-old metropolis was reinvented to embody the greatness of Stalinist society. Moscow Monumental explores how the quintessential architectural works of the late Stalin era fundamentally reshaped daily life in the Soviet capital. Drawing on a wealth of original archival research, it examines the decisions and actions of Soviet elites—from top leaders to master architects—and describes the experiences of ordinary Muscovites who found their lives uprooted by the ambitious skyscraper project.
Katherine Zubovich is assistant professor of history at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Her interests include the history of cities and urban planning; the history of architecture and visual culture; and modern transnational history. She received her PhD from University of California, Berkeley, and previously studied at the University of Toronto and the University of Victoria.
BOOK PRIZE 2021 PROMOTION
Get 10 percent off individual books on the shortlist in the Pushkin House Shop with the code BOOKPRIZE2021 or treat yourself to all six books on the shortlist and receive a 20 percent discount on the whole bundle. Proceeds from the Shop support Pushkin House’s charitable activities and help ensure the continutity of our work. We would love it if you chose us over the market giants.
2021 judges
Five distinguished judges with backgrounds in culture, politics, international affairs, business and academia will award £10,000 to the winner of the 2021 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize, for the best new non-fiction work published in English for the general reader.
Fiona Hill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former senior director of the US National Security Council, will chair the jury. Its members include the theatre director Declan Donnellan, Lord Robertson, the former secretary general of NATO, Maria Stepanova, the poet and editor, and Sergei Medvedev, the writer and academic who won the 2020 prize.
Fiona Hill said: “In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, and against the backdrop of unprecedented global transformations, we are very much looking forward to reading and evaluating some deeply researched and brilliantly written books providing deep insights into Russian history, culture, and politics.”
Declan Donnellan is the award-winning joint founder and artistic director of the international theatre company Cheek by Jowl, which has created over 40 productions, performing in over 400 cities, across six continents, and established a company of Russian actors in 1999. He wrote the play Lady Betty, co-directed the film Bel Ami and his book The Actor and the Target has been published in 15 languages.
Fiona Hill (chair) is senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, and was deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. She is co-author of Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin and The Siberian Curse: How Communist Planners Left Russia Out in the Cold.
Sergei Medvedev is a writer, journalist and professor at Moscow Free University. He was a professor at the Higher School of Economics, and is author of numerous books including The Return of the Russian Leviathan, winner of the 2020 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize. His latest book, Homo currens (The Running Man), will be published in 2021.
George Robertson is a Labour life peer, an adviser to BP having been Deputy Chairman of TNK-BP, BP’s Russian Joint venture. He was Secretary General of NATO and UK Defence Secretary. He is a Special Adviser to Chatham House and is on the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the United States.
Maria Stepanova is a poet, essayist, journalist and the author of ten poetry collections and three books of essays. Her 2018 book In Memory of Memory has been shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize. She is founder and editor-in-chief of the online independent crowd-sourced journal Colta.ru, which covers the cultural, social and political reality of contemporary Russia.
The advisory board for the Pushkin House Russian Book Prize includes:
∙ Sir Rodric Braithwaite, former British ambassador to Moscow and author of Afgantsy
∙ Andrew Jack (chair), chairman emeritus, Pushkin House, and journalist at the Financial Times
∙ Bridget Kendall, BBC diplomatic correspondent, Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge University
∙ Andrew Nurnberg, managing director, Andrew Nurnberg Associates literary agency
∙ Marc Polonsky, trustee, The Polonsky Foundation
∙ Douglas Smith, historian, translator, author and winner of the 2013 Pushkin House Russian book prize
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