Olena Palko wins Alexander Nove Prize for 'Making Ukraine Soviet: Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin'
BASEES is delighted to announce that Olena Palko (University of Basel) has won the Alexander Nove Prize 2021 for her work Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020). The Jury also awarded a Honourable Mention to Katherine Zubovich for Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin’s Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021). The Prize will be awarded at the BASEES 2023 Annual Conference in Glasgow.
Winner
Making Ukraine Soviet. Literature and Cultural Politics under Lenin and Stalin (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).
Olena Palko’s highly accomplished book represents a ground-breaking contribution to several fields: Soviet history, Ukrainian history and 20th-century Ukrainian and Soviet literature and culture. It fundamentally rethinks the question of what ‘Sovietness’ and ‘Sovietization’ meant in, and for, Ukraine in the first decade and a half of Soviet rule: a question whose ongoing relevance is clear. In her lucid and subtle analysis, Palko shows how ‘Ukrainianization’ took on a range of different, and for a while equally plausible, meanings in the post-revolutionary literary and cultural world. Her account rejects binary approaches and instead brings alive the sense of possibility around what the revolution might mean, before more conventionally Soviet controls were imposed on Ukraine. The book’s narrative, grounded in meticulous, wide-ranging research and beautifully written throughout, moves effortlessly between the ‘big picture’ of Ukrainian history, and richly nuanced analyses of literary texts, cultural manifestoes, and individual figures. Palko’s choice of Pavlo Tychyna and Mykola Khvyl’ovyi as the key representatives of two different visions of Soviet Ukrainian culture is inspired. Their complex lives and writings, and their connections to many other Ukrainian writers and artists, epitomise the richness and dynamism of the period that she analyses so masterfully. Around them, the book weaves a vivid picture of a whole literary and artistic culture in a state of flux, excitement and ultimately disillusionment. It is a rare book that has so much to offer to literary scholars and historians alike. The fact that this is Palko’s first monograph only makes the achievement more remarkable.
Honourable Mention
Katherine Zubovich, Moscow Monumental: Soviet Skyscrapers and Urban Life in Stalin’s Capital (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021).
Katherine Zubovich’s meticulously researched and carefully crafted book reveals how the construction of Stalinist skyscrapers in Moscow transformed Moscow’s skyline, urban life in the capital, and the relationship between state and society. These remarkable structures, examined in such detail for the first time, are researched from multiple angles and perspectives, crossing the boundaries of architecture, urban planning, social and cultural history. Based on an impressively detailed examination of archival and published sources, Zubovich reveals how these monumental buildings were designed, built, used, and subsequently understood. This lucidly written, beautifully illustrated, and highly readable first book brings to life the stories of the designers and decision makers who planned the skyscrapers, the workers responsible for their construction, those displaced by building sites, and finally the privileged individuals who lived within them. Moscow Monumentalism also explores the many unintended consequences created by created Stalinist skyscrapers. These symbols of Soviet modernity displaced tens of thousands of people, and created new unplanned settlements on the city’s margins for construction workers. Buildings envisaged as enduring monuments were soon understood as symbols of Stalinist excess. Zubovich offers a compelling account of how these familiar features of Moscow’s skyline came to be, allowing us to see these structures and their far-reaching impact with fresh eyes.
Judges: Professor Polly Jones (University of Oxford) and Dr Robert Dale (Newcastle University)