2012 Recipient

Established in 1983, the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize, sponsored by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES) and the Stanford University Center for Russian and East European Studies, is awarded annually for the most important contribution to Russian, Eurasian, and East European studies in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences published in English in the United States in the previous calendar year.

Winner: Catherine Evtuhov
Title: Portrait of a Russian Province: Economy, Society, and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (University of Pittsburgh Press)

Portrait of a Russian Province is a mature, erudite, and gracefully written book. Evtuhov uses Nizhnii Novgorod in the period between 1840-1890 as a prism for revealing the dynamism of the Russian provincial setting and to offer a much broader, richer account of the concept of “province.” She examines Nizhnii Novgorod both as a concrete space (soil, rivers, ravines, urban spaces, market networks) and as an imagined project for local intellectuals, professionals and activists in the post-reform period. The treatment of how local society and regional vlast’ interacted, collaborated and clashed is nuanced and convincing; the complex, often crucial impact of Old Believer settlements is traced subtly. The book is based on a range of sources, from the literary, photographic and journalistic to the work of demographers and historians; archival material is used astutely, although Evtuhov also demonstrates by her recourse to underused provincial publications how much new information has long been available in plain view. Portrait of a Russian Province situates its argument generously within the debates of other scholars and wears its erudition lightly. It offers a deeply pleasurable reading experience and provides a strong impulse for scholars disciplines to rethink the dynamics and texture of Russian life in the late imperial era.

Honorable Mentions: Katerina Clark and Gail Kligman & Katherine Verdery