2015 Recipient

The Ed A Hewett Book Prize, established in 1994 and sponsored by the University of Michigan Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, is awarded annually for an outstanding monograph on the political economy of Russia, Eurasia and/or Eastern Europe, published in the previous year.

Winner: Yanni Kotsonis
Title: States of Obligation: Taxes and Citizenship in the Russian Empire and Early Soviet Republic (University of Toronto Press)

Yanni Kotsonis’ States of Obligation is an exhaustively documented history of taxation and citizenship in imperial Russia and the early Soviet Republic. Kotsonis combines narrative and comparative analyses of Russian and European fiscal policy debates, and the impact of fiscal reform on the peasantry. Based on the mid-nineteenth century debates over civil rights, surveillance and individual autonomy, he traces the evolution of the Russian state into a “membership organization” by the late nineteenth century. He then shows how under the Bolsheviks the state absorbed the autonomies of both the state and the person, while European states continued to grapple with “the dualities and tensions” of modern polity. Drawing on Russian and European perspectives in economic and political thought Kotsonis illuminates the decision-making and the stakeholders in the processes of reforms in the imperial and early Soviet periods. The book provides an excellent assessment of the level and incidence of taxation, rooted in the social sciences, along with a solid foundation of Russian historiography. This is an outstanding study of some of the most controversial issues in Russian economic and political development, including the weight of industrialization and taxation on the peasants.

Honorable Mention: Kelly McMann