Professor Jeff Sahadeo Wins Taylor and Francis Book Prize in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

I am delighted to announce that the 2020 Canadian Association of Slavists/Taylor and Francis Book Prize in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies will go to Dr. Jeff Sahadeo’s Voices from the Soviet Edge (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2019). As the committee’s report summarizes, “This book represents an important contribution to our understanding of the late socialist period in the Soviet Union. Based on an original archive of oral history interviews produced by the author and his research team over the course of several years and supplemented by archival and published primary sources, the book challenges the conventional wisdom that late socialism was a period of ‘stagnation’ and that the internationalism at the heart of the Soviet project was by then an empty slogan. Dr. Sahadeo offers a critical re-evaluation by following the life trajectories of Soviet citizens who migrated from the southern and eastern regions to its capital cities, and argues that their experience was one of social dynamism, vertical mobility, opportunities for self-realization, and active inter-ethnic, cross-cultural and cross-religious dialogue.

.

Dr. Sahadeo reveals a complicated relationship of Soviet migrants to Moscow and Leningrad (as both concrete places and as symbols), how meaningful the idea of ‘friendship of the peoples’ was to them even as they were aware of its hypocritical elements, how they dealt with various forms of racism and chauvinism directed at them, and how they navigated their quasi-colonial relationship to Russia, simultaneously resenting it but also instrumentalizing it. In doing so, Voices from the Soviet Edge informs our understanding of current-day racial politics and attitudes in Russia. Its protagonists involve a good balance of gender, region, and profession, thus making this excellent and thorough social history. Dr. Sahadeo also brings late Soviet history of migration into the global context of decolonization and population movements in the second half of the twentieth century, showing how much the Soviet modernist project shared with Western metropolitan areas. Last but not least, this book is extremely readable and easy to follow not only for specialists and students of Soviet history, but also for the general public.”

.

Thank you to the Book Prize Committee members for their hard work and, of course, congratulations to Dr. Jeff Sahadeo!

.

Dr. Alison Rowley

President, Canadian Association of Slavists

Professor, Department of History

Concordia University