Historian’s Book Shortlisted for £10,000 Pushkin Prize

Professor Trish Starks of the History Department in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences has been shortlisted for the 2023 Pushkin Prize for her book Cigarettes and Soviets: Smoking in the USSR. The prize, which honors the best-written non-fiction book on Russia, carries a cash award of £10,000.

Kathryn Sloan, interim dean of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, noted, “It has been a big year for publications on Russia. For professor Starks to be singled out from such a wide field of interdisciplinary works for this international honor is a proud moment for our college and university.”

Starks’ book melds her work in the history of medicine with her skills in Russian language to detail the rich story of the Soviet smoking habit.

“The rise of Russian and Soviet tobacco use does not follow the narratives we are familiar with from the West,” she argues. “Even though the Soviets have the first national anti-smoking programs, starting in 1920, and they do not have the marketing or product sophistication of Western manufacturers, their people smoke in mass numbers.” Her work, with its implications for broad-based programs that address a full spectrum of causes and prompts for addiction, has been taken up by current cessation researchers in the fight against smoking.

A panel of six international specialists, including journalists, film makers, scholars and policy makers, will choose from the six shortlisted books to highlight the work that best combines “readability, originality and excellence in research.” The Pushkin Prize winner will be announced at a June 15 ceremony in London.

Since 1954, the Pushkin House has encouraged cross-cultural understanding with exhibitions and programming. Building from these beginnings, Pushkin House “has been a meeting point for intellectuals and creatives from Anna Akhmatova to Maria Stepanova, from Isaiah Berlin to Antony Beevor, from Alexander Kerensky to Alexei Navalny and from Eric Estorick to Ian Christie.” The book prize has been awarded annually since 2013.