Nove prize awarded to Fabian Baumann

The BASEES judging panel was delighted to award this year’s Nove Prize to Dr Fabian Baumann of Heidelberg University for his monograph, 'Dynasty Divided’.

Baumann, Fabian. Dynasty Divided: A Family History of Russian and Ukrainian Nationalism. Cornell University Press, 2023.

Dynasty Divided is a fascinating family history, but it is much more than that: through the complicated twists and turns of several generations and branches of the Shul’gin/Shul’hyn family, Fabian Baumann traces the emergence and interplay of multiple visions of Ukrainian identity, with profound implications for our understanding of 19th, 20th and 21st century history.

With members affiliated with Russophone imperialism, nascent Ukrainian nationalism and many shades in between, this sprawling Kyiv family emerges as a microcosm of the political and cultural debates out of which the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the late 19th century and early 20th centuries gradually shaped their sense of self and nation. Moreover, in tracing these processes, Bauman powerfully intervenes in broader debates about nationalism, highlighting the crucial importance of choices and affiliations, rather than primordial essence, in shaping identities. This rich micro-history also brings into sharp focus the important, yet obscured, role of women and domestic settings in shaping these formative debates about Ukraine and its relations with empire.

Baumann’s book is a model of meticulous research, exhaustive in its excavation of the Shulhyns’ many stories, yet sensitive to the silences that remain in the historical record. This vivid, subtle and often surprising narrative of a Kyiv family across the revolutionary divide represents a major contribution both to the fields of Ukrainian and imperial history, and also to present-day debates about Ukraine’s past and future.

Honorable mention:

The judges also commended Oksana Sarkisova and Olga Shevchenko for ‘In Visible Presence. Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos’.

Sarkisova, Oksana, and Shevchenko, Olga. In Visible Presence: Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos. MIT Press, 2023.

In Visible Presence is a rich and brilliantly written exploration of Soviet history and memory through family photographs. Meticulously researched, Sarkisova and Shevchenko’s book uncovers multi-generational perspectives on the Soviet era, all prompted by the same set of photographs. With great care and sensitivity to their sources and interlocutors, the authors unravel layers of memories - both nostalgic and traumatic - revealing silences and unspoken pains in family histories. The book also highlights the entanglements between private and public spheres, showing how family stories intertwine with, and are often exploited by, contemporary memory politics in Russia. With its interdisciplinary appeal and over 250 beautifully reproduced black-and-white photos, this book is a must-read for everyone interested in the Soviet era and its afterlives in today’s Russia and beyond