W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize

2024 Recipient

Fabian Baumann

Dynasty Divided: A Family History of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism

The W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize, established in 2004 and sponsored by Mary Lincoln in memory of W. Bruce 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, published in the previous calendar year.  

Winner: Fabian Baumann, Dynasty Divided: A Family History of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism (Northern Illinois University Press, an imprint of Cornell University Press, 2023)  

In Dynasty Divided, Fabian Baumann offers an innovative approach to examining the complexities and tensions of nationality formation through a deeply researched history of a single family that split into Ukrainians and Russians. With gripping narration and fascinating detail, Baumann charts the turn of the Shul’gins into vehement Russian nationalists and defenders of the tsarist regime, while the Shul’hyns embraced a Ukrainian identity and supported radical politics in favor of autonomy. Rather than ethnicity, land, religion, or language producing varied nationalisms within the western borderlands of the Russian Empire or elites devising national cultures from a repertoire of cultural myths, in the case of this family small decisions and intimate circumstances led to inherited divisions in nationality that then took on a vibrant life of their own. In contrast to many studies that exclusively focus on intellectual output and public action, this account acknowledges women’s essential contributions to national differentiation. Covering more than a century of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, Baumann succeeds in providing an exquisitely sophisticated study of how individuals came to embrace identities with profound political meaning. At a time when military aggression assaults our capacities for nuanced accuracy, such a book offers hope that we can all keep our wits as well. 

Honorable Mentions: Una Bergmane and Nicole Eaton

Prize Committee: Andy Bruno (chair), Krista Goff, and Kristin Roth-Ey