Book by Oleg Khlevniuk Recognized by Pushkin House, London
Stalin: New Biography of a Dictator (Yale) by Oleg Khlevniuk (translated by Nora Favorov) has received the second prize of Pushkin House (UK), for the best Russian book in translation. The award, supported by Waterstones and Douglas Smith & Stephanie Ellis-Smith, recognizes the best non-fiction writing on the Russian-speaking world published for the first time in English in the previous year. The aim of the award is to encourage public understanding and intelligent debate about the Russian-speaking world and support the exchange of ideas between Russian and English.
The panel of judges for the 2016 Pushkin House Russian Book Prize comprised Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg; Baroness Elizabeth Smith of Gilmorehill, founding trustee of the John Smith Trust; Geoffrey Hosking, emeritus professor of Russian history, School of Slavonic & East European Studies, University College London; Anne McElvoy, senior editor at the Economist; and Serhii Plokhy, professor of Ukrainian history at Harvard University.
According to Serhii Plokhy, ‘Oleg Khlevniuk’s book is the result of his decade long study of the history of Stalin and Stalinism. He set the record straight on the contentious issues of Stalinism and provided solid foundations for future research in the field.’ Douglas Smith, historian, translator, author and winner of the 2013 Pushkin House Russian book prize, and Stephanie Ellis-Smith, said: ‘To have Oleg Khlevniuk’s magisterial new biography available to the English-speaking world in this fabulous translation is hugely important.’