2014 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: Kate Brown
Title: Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press)

Plutopia is about the effects of processing plutonium on the “nuclear families” and “atomic cities” assembled for that purpose. It is an accomplished work of comparative history – or in fact, the history of linked projects, which entail simultaneously feats of engineering, social engineering, and ideological savvy and ambition, and which result in matching and interconnected environmental, medical, and ultimately (especially in the Soviet case) social cataclysms.  This is a gorgeously written book, truly heartbreaking but also meticulous, deeply analytical and complex, an extraordinary study of how persons are coerced to go along with the crazy (truly crazy) military projects of utopian states, and how invisible the catastrophes of the cold war remain, even to many people who worked at the heart of plutonium production and suffered (indeed, still suffer) its devastations. The book compels us to see the cold war period and its aftermath in a new light, providing much food for thought about the hard issues of security vs. the right to privacy, knowing what we know and yet failing to act on the knowledge. This is why Plutopia is not only a very engaging book, but also a very important one.

Honorable Mentions: Valerie Kivelson and Derek Sayer