2021 Recipient

The Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History, established in 2009 and sponsored by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe or Eurasia in the field of history in the previous calendar year.

Co-Winner: Krista A. Goff
Title: Nested Nationalism: Making and Unmaking Nations in the Soviet Union (Cornell University Press)

This is a groundbreaking book. Deeply researched and methodologically sophisticated, it is the first to examine the history of the Soviet Union’s non-titular nationalities from the early Soviet period to the present day. The focus is on Azerbaijan, but the scope is far broader. The book seeks the roots of non-titular populations’ current national self-awareness not only in Soviet nationality policies from the 1920s onwards and in the policies of Azerbaijan’s leaders, but also in the impact of World War II and developments, including geopolitics, in the broader region beyond Soviet borders. This history, she argues, has shaped the current activism of national minorities and is vital to understanding the ethnic conflicts that erupted as the Soviet Union gradually came apart. Remarkably, even as the book paints a large and complex canvas, it rarely loses sight of its human subjects. In addition to extensive archival research, Goff has made exceptionally creative use of visual and ethnographic sources to illuminate matters about which the archives were either silent or rendered off-limits by nationalist politics. Nested Nationalism remains an engaging read throughout, a tribute to Goff’s authorial skill.

Co-Winner: Anita Kurimay