Best Historical Research of 2020: Ab Imperio and KRES Poliskola finalize the competition and award the winners
KRES Poliskola is pleased to present to your attention the results of the IV Annual AB Imperio competition for the best research on new imperial history of Northern Eurasia, diversity and nationalism in the post-Soviet space until the end of the 20th century.
Despite a difficult pandemic year for everyone, a lot of extremely interesting works were submitted for the competition, among which the International Contest Committee comprised of the Ab Imperio’s editorial board and editors selected the following:
1) Best book:
Stephen Badalyan Riegg, Russia’s Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801–1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020). 314 pp., ills. Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-501137.
In the monograph, the author reveals complex relationships between the Romanov state and the Armenian diaspora, both on the Russia’s territorial fringes and in the tsarist empire’s metropolitan centers. How did the reality of the tsarist empire collide with the ideas of the Armenians about their national identity, what were the “social ladders” for the representatives of the Armenian national minority, how did the Romanovs try to integrate the diaspora into their empire? You can find answers to these and many other questions in the book.
Special mention:
Dmitry Sen. Russian-Crimean-Ottoman Borderlands: Spa
ce, Phenomena, People (late 17th – 18th centuries): Selected works. Rostov-on-Don: Altair, 2020.420 p. ISBN: 978-5-91951-632-3.
The book includes works reflecting different stages and directions of the author’s research activities. The key topic of the publication is the history of the Southern borderland and the new border order emerging in the space of interstate confrontation and treaties between Russia, the Crimean Khanate and the Ottoman Empire, starting from the end of the 17th century.
2) Best article in a peer-reviewed academic journal or chapter in a scholarly collection:
Ivan Sablin, Jargal Badagarov, and Irina Sodnomova, “Khural Democracy: Imperial Transformations and the Making of the First Mongolian Constitution 1911–1924,” in Simon Wickhamsmith and Phillip P. Marzluf (Eds.), Socialist and Post-Socialist Mongolia Nation, Identity, and Culture (London: Routledge, 2021), 14–42.
Special mention:
Norihiro Naganawa, “Tatars and Imperialist Wars: From the Tsar’s Servitors to the Red Warriors,” Ab Imperio, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2020): 164–196.
We are also pleased to announce that, starting in 2020, our distinguished judges-historians have included in the competition a new, third category: “Best dissertation chapter.”
3) Best dissertation chapter:
Andrey Shlyakhter, “Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade Across the Soviet Frontier, 1919–1924” (University of Chicago, 2020).
Special mention:
Irina Makhalova, “Collaboration in Crimea during the Nazi Occupation (1941–1944)” / National Research University Higher School of Economics, 2020.
The 2020 competition is over, we thank all the participants and congratulate the laureates!
For the announcements of the 2021 competition, please follow the website of the AB Imperio magazine and subscribe to the news of our KRES Poliskola.
Good luck!
