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.
Benjamin Tromly
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."
Ben Tromly's dissertation, "Re-Imagining the Soviet Intelligentsia: Student Politics and University Life, 1948-1964," is framed by a fresh and exciting conceptualization of the intelligentsia as a discursive category that both reflected and shaped how educated citizens understood their relationships to higher knowledge, to the party-state, and to each other during a period of transition. The fruit of imaginative and exhaustive research in Russian libraries and archives and thoughtful interviewing, it focuses on the trajectory of students' intellectual identities at Moscow, Kiev, and Saratov universities from the late Stalin era to Khrushchev's ouster in 1964. The dissertation systematically challenges conventional and oversimplified assumptions about such important historical issues as possibilities for autonomous socialization and sociability within state institutions as well as outside the state's purview in the last years of Stalin's rule, the role of the Komsomol, the seedbed of political "revisionism" and Ukrainian nationalism, the relationship of Soviet intellectuals to the process of de-Stalinization in eastern Europe, and what the Virgin Lands and other public works campaigns meant to students, teachers, and other intellectuals. Its astute blending of social and cultural approaches to the political history of the USSR exemplifies the best tradition of historical scholarship as practiced by Robert C. Tucker and Stephen F. Cohen and embodies the makings of an outstanding first book.
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."
