Nathans’ Book on Jews in Tsarist Russia Wins Third Award
January 2005
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The American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies has recognized Benjamin Nathans, associate professor of history, with the W. Bruce Lincoln Book Prize for his Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia.
In the book, which was published by the University of California Press in 2002, Nathans uses materials from long-closed Russian archives to reassess the history of the Jewish encounter with tsarist Russia in the 50 years before the Revolution of 1917.
The association, which represents American scholarship in Russian, Central Eurasian and Central and East European studies, presents the award for first books “of exceptional merit and lasting significance for the understanding of Russia’s past.” The book also received the association’s Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize and the Koret Foundation’s Koret Jewish Book Award in history. It was also a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in history.
Nathans teaches and writes about Imperial Russian intellectual history and modern Jewish history. He is a member of the Jewish studies program, the graduate group in comparative literature and the graduate group in Germanic languages and literatures. He is currently studying the history of dissent in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from the time of Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953 to the collapse of communism at the end of the 20th century.