2015 Recipient

The Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies (formerly the Orbis Book Prize), established in 1996 and sponsored by the Kulczycki family, former owners of the Orbis Books Ltd. of London, England, is awarded annually for the best book in any discipline, on any aspect of Polish affairs, published in the previous calendar year.

Co-Winner: Per Andres Rudling
Title: The Rise and Fall of Belarusian Nationalism, 1906-1931 (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Per Anders Rudling’s study, based on multilingual archival research, probes a neglected corner of early 20th-century East Central European history, exploring a national movement that did not come to fruition at the time, but which provides vital context for the political and cultural shape of Belarus today. At the turn of the 20th century, and especially after the Revolution of 1905, this geographical center of former Poland-Lithuania, which also constituted the core of Jewish settlement in Europe, was at the receiving end of various national movements. Its predominantly rural population preferred confessional and estate identities; few saw themselves in national terms. During the Great War, the region underwent a radical overhaul. Organized as a quasi-polity, Land Ober Ost, Germany pursued its modernization by replacing Russian with German and Polish, and introducing—for the first time ever—Belarusian, Latvian, Lithuanian, and Yiddish as languages of education, newspapers, and local administration. The Peace of Riga split the land between interwar Poland and Bolshevik Russia. Despite as many as five declarations of Belarusian independence by 1920, Belarusian nationalism and language never became a rallying point for the population. Warsaw sought to assimilate ‘tentative Belarusians’ through Polonization efforts and by destroying or seizing Orthodox churches. In the Soviet Union, the tactical usefulness of Belarusian nationalism was recognized and a Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic fashioned; there, the official multilingualism of the Land Ober Ost continued until mid-1930s, when the Great Terror shifted gears to Russification. Rudling’s masterful text demonstrates how Belarusian nationalism, caught between the nationalizing Polish state and the totalizing aims of the Soviet Union, never really spread much further than its elite adherents, many of whom had been dependent on German support. All the same, the movement laid the framework for a Belarusian state. The book should become the first port of call for commentators on present-day Belarus.

Co-Winner: Michael Fleming

Honorable Mention: Glenn Kurtz