Pushkin House Russian Book Prize

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

Pushkin House Russian Book Prize winners and shortlists
Year Author(s) Title Publisher Result Ref.
2013 Douglas Smith Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy Farrar, Straus and Giroux Winner
Anne Applebaum Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–1956 Allen Lane Shortlist
Masha Gessen The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin Riverhead Books Shortlist
Thane Gustafson Wheel of Fortune: The Battle for Oil and Power in Russia Harvard University Press Shortlist
Donald Raleigh Soviet Baby Boomers: An Oral History of Russia’s Cold War Generation Oxford University Press Shortlist
Karl Schlögel Moscow 1937 Polity 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-Bader, trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones 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: 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: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars Allen Lane Shortlist
Anne Garrels Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia Farrar, Straus and Giroux Shortlist
Simon Sebag Montefiore The Romanovs: 1613–1918 Orion Shortlist
Simon Morrison Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Tsars to Today 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: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War Viking Shortlist
Katja Petrowskaja Maybe Esther: A Family Story 4th Estate Shortlist
2020 Sergei Medvedev The Return of the Russian Leviathan Polity Winner
Brian Boeck Stalin's Scribe: The Life of Mikhail Sholokhov Pegasus Books Shortlist
Kate Brown Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future W. W. Norton & Company Shortlist
Bathsheba Demuth Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait W. W. Norton & Company Shortlist
Owen Matthews An Impeccable Spy: Richard Sorge, Stalin’s Master Agent Bloomsbury Shortlist
Joan Neuberger This Thing of Darkness: Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in Stalin's Russia Cornell University Press Shortlist
2021 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 Mary Sarotte Not One Inch: America, Russia, and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate Yale University Press Winner
Frank Billé and Caroline Humphrey On the Edge: Life along the Russia-China Border Harvard University Press Shortlist
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
Thane Gustafson Klimat: Russia in the Age of Climate Change Harvard University Press Shortlist
Maria Stepanova In Memory of Memory New Directions Publishing Shortlist
Deyan Sudjic Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow MIT Press Shortlist
Lucy Ward The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus Oneworld Publications Shortlist
Elizabeth Wilson Playing with Fire: The Story of Maria Yudina- Pianist in Stalin’s Russia Yale University Press Shortlist
Vladislav Zubok Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union Yale University Press Shortlist
2023 Owen Matthews Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Ukraine Mudlark Winner
Ryan Tucker Jones Red Leviathan: The Secret History of Soviet Whaling University of Chicago Press Shortlist
Jade McGlynn Russia’s War Polity Shortlist
Olga Petri Places of Tenderness and Heat: The Queer Milieu of Fin-de-Siècle St. Petersburg Cornell University Press Shortlist
Natasha Lance Rogoff Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Shortlist
Tricia Starks Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR Cornell University Press Shortlist
2024 Elena Kostyuchenko I Love Russia: Reporting from a Lost Country by Elena Kostyuchenko Bodley Head Winner
Julie A. Cassiday Russian Style: Performing Gender, Power, and Putinism University of Wisconsin Press Shortlist
Dan Healey The Gulag Doctors: Life, Death, and Medicine in Stalin's Labour Camps Yale University Press Shortlist
Tom Parfitt High Caucasus: A Mountain Quest in Russia's Haunted Hinterland Headline Book Publishing Shortlist
Serhii Plokhy The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History Allen Lane Shortlist
Laur Vallikivi Words and Silences: Nenets Reindeer Herders and Russian Evangelical Missionaries in the Post-Soviet Arctic Indiana University Press Shortlist
2025 Benjamin Nathans To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement Princeton University Press Winner
Howard Amos Russia Starts Here: Real Lives in the Ruins of Empire Bloomsbury Continuum Shortlist
Lucy Ash The Baton and the Cross: Russia's Church from Pagans to Putin Icon Books Shortlist
Alexei Navalny, translated by Arch Tait & Stephen Dalziel Patriot Bodley Head Shortlist
Sergey Radchenko To Run the World: The Kremlin's Cold War Bid for Global Power Cambridge University Press Shortlist
Donald Rayfield 'A Seditious and Sinister Tribe’ : The Crimean Tatars and Their Khanate Reaktion Books Shortlist

Notes

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

References

  1. ↑ "About the prize".
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2013". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2014". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2015". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2016". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2017". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2018". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2019". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2020". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2022-02-11.
  10. ↑ 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.
  11. ↑ Times, The Moscow (2022-01-27). "Pushkin House Gets Ready for Its 10th Anniversary Book Prize". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  12. ↑ "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.
  13. ↑ "2022 Pushkin House Book Prize Awarded to Mary Sarotte". The Moscow Times. 2022-09-29. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  14. ↑ Couch, Emily (2022-07-17). "'On The Edge: Life Along the Russia-China Border'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  15. ↑ Sorokina, Yanina (2022-09-04). "Timothy Frye's 'Weak Strongman' Overturns the Putin Myth". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  16. ↑ Berkhead, Samantha (2022-08-14). "'Klimat': A Look at Russia's Looming Climate Reckoning". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  17. ↑ "Maria Stepanova's 'In Memory of Memory'". The Moscow Times. 2022-09-25. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  18. ↑ Couch, Emily (2022-08-21). "'Stalin's Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  19. ↑ Berdy, Michele A. (2022-07-31). "Lucy Ward Investigates 'The Empress and the English Doctor'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  20. ↑ Amos, Howard (2022-09-18). "Elizabeth Wilson Chronicles the Miraculous Life of Maria Yudina". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2022-10-13.
  21. ↑ "Pushkin House 10th Annual Book Prize Shortlists Ten Books". The Moscow Times. 2022-06-06. Retrieved 2022-06-08.
  22. ↑ "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.
  23. 1 2 3 4 5 "Pushkin House Announces Short List for 2023 Book Prize". The Moscow Times. 2023-04-27. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
  24. 1 2 3 4 5 "2023 shortlist". Pushkin House. Retrieved 2023-06-20.
  25. ↑ 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.
  26. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Book Prize 2024 Shortlist". Pushkin House Shop. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  27. ↑ Berdy, Michele A. (2025-06-20). "Benjamin Nathans' 'To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause' Awarded 2025 Pushkin House Book Prize'". The Moscow Times. Retrieved 2024-07-25.
  28. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Pushkin House Book Prize 2025 Shortlist". Pushkin House Shop. Retrieved 2025-07-10.