2008 Tucker/Cohen Dissertation Prize
The 2008 Tucker/Cohen Dissertation Prize, sponsored by the JKW Foundation, is presented for an outstanding English-language doctoral dissertation defended at an American or Canadian university in the tradition of historical political science and political history of the Soviet Union as practiced by Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen.
The 2008 Tucker/Cohen Dissertation Prize was awarded to Benjamin Tromly, who received his PhD in History from the Harvard University in June 2007. His dissertation was titled "Re-Imagining the Soviet Intelligentsia: Student Politics and University Life, 1948-1964."
The prize committee also decided to present an Honorable Mention award to Edward Cohn, who received his PhD in History from the University of Chicago in August 2007. His dissertation was titled "Disciplining the Party: The Expulsion and Censure of Communists in the Post-War Soviet Union, 1945-1961."
Edward Cohn
Ed Cohn's dissertation, "Disciplining the Party: The Expulsion and Censure of Communists in the Post-War Soviet Union, 1945-1961," is a highly detailed study of the shift in the way the party treated deviant behavior in the post-war era. Its central argument that the discipline system became less repressive but more intrusive after Stalin, that it increasingly concerned itself with such "private-life" issues as family stability is based on exhaustive research in both central and provincial archives and employs both quantitative and qualitative indices. Replete with colorful examples and written in an engaging manner, the dissertation makes an important contribution to the rapidly expanding literature on the postwar and post-Stalin periods. Its conversion into a monograph is eagerly awaited.
