2025

The Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History, established in 2009 and sponsored by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe, or Eurasia in the field of history in the previous calendar year. 

Honorable Mention: Jeffrey S. Hardy, Finding God in the Gulag: A History of Christianity in the Soviet Penal System (Oxford University Press, 2024) 

Jeffrey S. Hardy’s Finding God in the Gulag offers a deeply researched and nuanced account of religious life within the Soviet prison and labor camp system. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, firsthand testimonies, and even Christian material culture and body art, Hardy demonstrates how Orthodox Christians, Baptists, and other Christian groups negotiated the often contradictory realities of a state committed to atheism yet inconsistent in enforcing religious suppression. Particularly compelling are the narratives of individual inmates, whose efforts to interpret their suffering through spiritual frameworks underscore the human capacity for resilience. Combining institutional history with personal stories, Finding God in the Gulag represents an original and welcome contribution to the growing body of scholarship engaging with religion in the Soviet Union.  

Winner: Simon Morrison

Winner: Benjamin Nathans

Prize Committee: Stephen Norris (chair), Małgorzata Fidelis, and Eren Tasar