2009 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: Laurie Manchester
Title: Holy Fathers, Secular Sons: Clergy, Intelligentsia and the Modern Self in Revolutionary Russia (Northern Illinois University Press)

Combining sociological and anthropological analysis, intellectual history, and insights drawn from reading personal texts, Manchester identifies and describes the group ethos of the popovichi (the sons of Orthodox clergymen), showing that their moral values, social loyalties, and ambivalent identities played a large role in Russia’s uneasy transition into the modern world after the Great Reforms of the 1860s. This carefully researched, beautifully written, and highly original book prompts us to rethink such issues as the formation of the intelligentsia, the secularization of educated society, and the rise of modern selfhood in post reform Russia.

Honorable Mention: Peter Andreas