2019

Honorable Mention: Elizabeth McGuire
Title: Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution (Oxford University Press)

In her book, Red at Heart: How Chinese Communists Fell in Love with the Russian Revolution, Elizabeth McGuire deploys formidable linguistic skills (in both Chinese and Russian) to tell a history of relations—both personal and public—between Chinese and Russian socialist true believers. Conceived in the genre of the romance of unrequited love, McGuire’s story starts in the 1920s and ends with the Chinese cultural revolution (1966-1976). Claiming that typically young radicals fall in love with the leaders of a previous revolution, McGuire shows how young Chinese revolutionaries who studied in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s became enamored of the Russian revolutionary model. The originality of Red at Heart lies in its subjective approach, telling the personal stories of Chinese and Russian students, who actually married and started families, and subsequently played interesting roles in their respective governments. McGuire offers a unique cultural and social story of interaction between Marxist ideology and the realities of building socialism.

Winner: Sarah Cameron