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.
Honorees
| Year | Author(s) | Title | Publisher | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | Douglas Smith | Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy | Winner | ||
| Anne Applebaum | Iron Curtain | Shortlist | |||
| Masha Gessen | The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin | Shortlist | |||
| Thane Gustafson | Wheel of Fortune | Shortlist | |||
| Donald Raleigh | Soviet Baby Boomers | Shortlist | |||
| Karl Schlögel | Moscow 1937 | Shortlist | |||
| 2014 | Catherine Merridale | Red Fortress: The Secret Heart of Russia's History | Allen Lane | Winner | |
| Vladimir Alexandrov | The Black Russian | Head of Zeus | Shortlist | ||
| Sheila Fitzpatrick | A Spy in the Archives: a Memoir of Cold War Russia | I.B. Tauris | Shortlist | ||
| Owen Matthews | Glorious Misadventures: Nikolai Rezanov and the Dream of a Russian America | Bloomsbury | Shortlist | ||
| Anya von Bremzen | Mastering The Art of Soviet Cooking | Transworld | Shortlist | ||
| Stephen Walsh | Mussorgsky and His Circle: a Russian Musical Adventure | Faber and Faber | Shortlist | ||
| 2015 | Serhii Plokhy | The Last Empire: The final days of the Soviet Union | Oneworld Publications | Winner | |
| Peter Finn and Petra Couvée | The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the battle over a forbidden book | Harvill Secker/Vintage Books | Shortlist | ||
| Jacek Hugo, trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones | Bader- Kolyma Diaries: A Journey into Russia’s haunted hinterland | Portobello Books | Shortlist | ||
| Catriona Kelly | St Petersburg: Shadows of the past | Yale University Press | Shortlist | ||
| Stephen Kotkin | Stalin Volume I: Paradoxes of power,1878-1928 | Penguin Press | Shortlist | ||
| Peter Pomerantsev | Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia | Faber and Faber | Shortlist | ||
| 2016 | Dominic Lieven | Towards the Flame: Empire, War and the End of Tsarist Russia | Penguin Press | Winner | |
| Gabriel Gorodetsky (ed.) | Maisky Diaries: Red Ambassador to the Court of St James’s 1932-43 | Yale University Press | Shortlist | ||
| Oleg Khlevniuk, trans. by Nora Seligman Favorov | Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator | Yale University Press | Shortlist | ||
| Bobo Lo | Russia and the New World Disorder | Brookings Institution | Shortlist | ||
| Alfred Rieber | Stalin and the Struggle for Supremacy in Eurasia | Cambridge University Press | Shortlist | ||
| Robert Service | The End of the Cold War: 1985-1991 | Pan Macmillan | Shortlist | ||
| 2017 | Rosalind Blakesley | The Russian Canvas: Painting in Imperial Russia 1757-1881 | Yale University Press | Winner | |
| Daniel Beer | The House of the Dead | Allen Lane | Shortlist | ||
| Anne Garrels | Putin Country | Farrar, Straus and Giroux | Shortlist | ||
| Simon Sebag Montefiore | The Romanovs | Orion | Shortlist | ||
| Simon Morrison | Bolshoi Confidential | Fourth Estate | Shortlist | ||
| 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 | Pushkin Press | Shortlist | ||
| 2018 | Alexis Peri | The War Within: Diaries From the Siege of Leningrad | Harvard University Press | Winner | |
| Rodric Braithwaite | Armageddon and Paranoia: The Nuclear Confrontation | Profile Books | Shortlist | ||
| Victoria Lomasko, trans. from Russian by Thomas Campbell | Other Russias | Penguin (first pub. by N+1) | Shortlist | ||
| Olivier Rolin, trans. from French by Ros Schwartz | Stalin’s Meteorologist: One Man’s Untold Story of Love, Life, and Death | Penguin | Shortlist | ||
| Yuri Slezkine | The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution | Princeton University Press | Shortlist | ||
| William Taubman | Gorbachev: His Life and Times | Simon & Schuster | Shortlist | ||
| 2019 | Serhii Plokhy | Chernobyl: The History of a Nuclear Catastrophe | Penguin | Winner | |
| Taylor Downing | 1983: The World at the Brink | Little, Brown Book Group | Shortlist | ||
| Mark Galeotti | The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia | Yale University Press | Shortlist | ||
| Eleonory Gilburd | To See Paris And Die: The Soviet Lives of Western Culture | Harvard University Press | Shortlist | ||
| Ben Macintyre | The Spy and the Traitor | Viking | Shortlist | ||
| Katja Petrowskaja | Maybe Esther: A Family Story | 4th Estate | Shortlist | ||
| 2020 | Sergei Medvedev | The Return of the Russian Leviathan | Winner | ||
| Brian Boeck | Stalin's Scribe: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov | Shortlist | |||
| Kate Brown | Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future | Shortlist | |||
| Bathsheba Demuth | Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait | Shortlist | |||
| Owen Matthews | An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent | Shortlist | |||
| Joan Neuberger | This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia | Shortlist | |||
| 2021 | Archie Brown | The Human Factor | Winner | ||
| Catherine Belton | Putin’s People | Shortlist | |||
| Evgeny Dobrenko | Late Stalinism | Shortlist | |||
| Jonathan Schneer | The Lockhart Plot | Shortlist | |||
| Andrei Zorin | Leo Tolstoy | Shortlist | |||
| Katherine Zubovich | Moscow Monumental | Shortlist | |||
| 2022 | Mary Sarotte | Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate | Winner | ||
| Frank Billé and Caroline Humphrey | On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border | Shortlist | |||
| Jan Matti Dollbaum | Morvan Lallouet and Ben Noble- Navalny: Putin's Nemesis, Russia's Future? | Shortlist | |||
| Timothy Frye | Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin's Russia | Shortlist | |||
| Thane Gustafson | Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change | Shortlist | |||
| Maria Stepanova | In Memory of Memory | Shortlist | |||
| Deyan Sudjic | Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow | Shortlist | |||
| Lucy Ward | The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus | Shortlist | |||
| Elizabeth Wilson | Playing with Fire: The Story of Maria Yudina- Pianist in Stalin’s Russia | Shortlist | |||
| Vladislav Zubok | Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union | Shortlist | |||
| 2023 | Owen Matthews | Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine | Winner | ||
| Ryan Tucker Jones | Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling | Shortlist | |||
| Jade McGlynn | Russia’s War | Shortlist | |||
| Olga Petri | Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg | Shortlist | |||
| Natasha Lance Rogoff | Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia | Shortlist | |||
| Tricia Starks | Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR | NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies | Shortlist | ||
| 2024 | Elena Kostyuchenko | I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko | Winner | ||
| Julie A. Cassiday | Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism | Shortlist | |||
| Dan Healey | The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin's Labour Camps | Shortlist | |||
| Tom Parfitt | High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia's Haunted Hinterland | Shortlist | |||
| Serhii Plokhy | The Russo-Ukrainian War | Shortlist | |||
| Laur Vallikivi | Words and Silences: Nenets Reindeer Herders and Russian Evangelical Missionaries in the Post-Soviet Arctic | Shortlist |
Notes
- The 2013 judges were Sir Rodric Braithwaite, A.D. Miller, Rachel Polonsky, Lord Robert Skidelsky, and Dmitri V. Trenin.
- The 2014 judging panel was chaired by Dr. Rowan Williams and included Boris Akunin, Viv Groskop, Catriona Kelly, and Douglas Smith.
- The 2015 judges were Lord Browne of Madingley, Dmitry Bykov, Varya Gornostaeva, Bridget Kendall, and Catherine Merridale.
- The 2016 judges were Geoffrey Hosking, Anne McElvoy, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, and Baroness Smith of Gilmorehill.
- Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator was named the Best Russian Book in Translation.
- The 2017 judging panel was chaired by Simon Franklin and included Anne Applebaum, Petr Aven, Dominic Lieven, and Charlotte Hobson.
- Memories was named the year's best Russian book in translation.
- The 2018 judging panel was chaired by Nick Clegg and included Rosalind Blakesley, Oleg Budnitsky, Dervla Murphy, and John Thornhill.
- Other Russias was named the year's best Russian book in translation.
- The 2019 judging panel was chaired by Sergey Guriyev and included Rachel Campbell-Johnson, Alexander Drozdov, Alexis Peri, and Andrei Zorin.
- The 2020 judges were Serhii Plokhy, Celestine Bohlen, Julia Safronova, and Richard Wright.
- The 2021 judges were Fiona Hill, Declan Donnellan, Sergei Medvedev, George Robertson, and Maria Stepanova.
- The 2022 judges were Evgenia Arbugaeva, Baroness Deborah Bull, Archie Brown (historian), Dmitry Glukhovsky, Ekaterina Schulmann.
- The 2023 judges were Ekaterina Schulmann, Philip Bullock, Masha Gessen, Alexander Rodnyansky, and Mary Elise Sarotte.
References
- "About the prize".
- ^ "Book Prize 2013". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- ^ "Book Prize 2014". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- ^ "Book Prize 2015". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- ^ "Book Prize 2016". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- ^ "Book Prize 2017". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- ^ "Book Prize 2018". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- ^ "Book Prize 2019". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- ^ "Book Prize 2020". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
- Berdy, Michele A. (2020-10-30). "Sergei Medvedev's "The Return of the Russian Leviathan" Wins 2020 Pushkin House Book Prize". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2020-11-03.
- Times, The Moscow (2022-01-27). "Pushkin House Gets Ready for Its 10th Anniversary Book Prize". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
- "История расширения НАТО и русско-еврейская семейная хроника: в Лондоне выбрали лучшие книги о России". BBC News Русская служба (in Russian). Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- "2022 Pushkin House Book Prize Awarded to Mary Sarotte". The Moscow Times. 2022-09-29. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- Couch, Emily (2022-07-17). "'On The Edge: Life Along the Russia-China Border'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- Sorokina, Yanina (2022-09-04). "Timothy Frye's 'Weak Strongman' Overturns the Putin Myth". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- Berkhead, Samantha (2022-08-14). "'Klimat': A Look at Russia's Looming Climate Reckoning". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- "Maria Stepanova's 'In Memory of Memory'". The Moscow Times. 2022-09-25. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- Couch, Emily (2022-08-21). "'Stalin's Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- Berdy, Michele A. (2022-07-31). "Lucy Ward Investigates 'The Empress and the English Doctor'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- Amos, Howard (2022-09-18). "Elizabeth Wilson Chronicles the Miraculous Life of Maria Yudina". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
- "Pushkin House 10th Annual Book Prize Shortlists Ten Books". The Moscow Times. 2022-06-06. Retrieved 2022-06-08.
- "Pushkin House Prize Awarded to Owen Matthews for 'Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin's War Against Ukraine'". The Moscow Times. 2023-06-16. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
- ^ "Pushkin House Announces Short List for 2023 Book Prize". The Moscow Times. 2023-04-27. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
- ^ "2023 shortlist". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
- Berdy, Michele A. (2024-06-14). "2024 Pushkin House Book Prize Awarded to Elena Kostyuchenko for 'I Love Russia: Reporting From a Lost Country'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
- ^ "Book Prize 2024 Shortlist". Pushkin House Shop. Retrieved 2024-07-25.