2025 Recipient

Emma Larson

“Day of Abolition of Kalym in the Kazakh ASSR, 1924-1932″

The Beth Holmgren Graduate Student Essay Prize, established in 1990 and named in honor of Professor Holmgren in 2021, is awarded for an outstanding essay by a graduate student in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.  

Winner: Emma Larson, “Day of Abolition of Kalym in the Kazakh ASSR, 1924-1932″ (Princeton University, 2024) 

Emma Larson’s essay provides a fascinating view of how Soviet policies about social and cultural transformation in Kazakhstan shifted shape after the Stalinist “revolution from above.” Larson focuses on how celebration of the Day of Abolition of Kalym changed over the early Soviet period. Kalym, or qalïng mal, the “bride price” that was part of customary Kazakh marital ritual, was deemed a relic of the past and declared a crime of custom by the Soviets. Its abolition was a Soviet attempt to reshape gender norms in Kazakh society and to overcome its so-called backwardness. In the 1920s, the celebration focused on specifically Kazakh issues, but after the Stalinist “revolution from above,” it was coopted into a more universalizing version of socialist construction. Larson tells this story through masterful use of archival and other primary sources, in both Russian and Kazakh, to show how Soviet nationalities policies shifted between the 1920s and the 1930s as Moscow’s concerns changed and Kazakhstan’s place in the union shifted.  

Prize Committee: Adeeb Khalid (chair), Emese Ivan, and Roman Utkin