2022 Citation Recipient
Kristy Ironside
The W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize, sponsored by Mary Lincoln, is awarded annually for an author’s first published monograph or scholarly synthesis that is of exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia’s past. The prize was established in 2004 in memory of W. Bruce Lincoln, a Russian historian and a widely-read author.
Co-Winner: Kristy Ironside
Title: A Full-Value Ruble: The Promise of Prosperity in the Postwar Soviet Union (Harvard University Press)
This lucid and deeply researched book demonstrates the centrality of money to the Soviet state’s efforts to rebuild the economy and offer citizens greater prosperity after the devastation of WWII, as well as to the Soviet people’s understanding of what a socialist good life should be. With an outstanding command of complex monetary policies and economic statistics, Kristy Ironside shows how efforts to increase economic equality and raise standards of living foundered on those same policies’ unintended effects and an economic slowdown. Throughout, Ironside highlights the ways that rural and urban Soviet working people experienced and influenced state efforts to strengthen the ruble, incentivize their labor, and raise living standards, bringing a potentially technical topic to vivid life and deepening our understanding of the politics of economic inequality.