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Rachel Polonsky, lecturer in the department of Slavonic Studies and author of Molotov’s Magic Lantern, is one of five judges for the new Pushkin House Russian Book Prize, whose winner will be announced at the Hay Festival on 29th May.

She will be taking part in a debate on Russian literature at the Festival, where the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge holds an annual series of talks. ̽��ֱ��aim of the prize is to further understanding of the Russian-speaking world by encouraging strong, intelligent, and accessible non-fiction writing in the English language (including translations) on Russian and Soviet history, culture, politics, economics, and everyday life, including biographies and memoirs. ̽��ֱ��judges will be looking for a book which can command a wide audience of non-specialists.

Dr Polonsky says that there is a need for more awareness of the complexities of post-Soviet Russian culture and where its deep faultlines lie, with the identity of the bombers of the Boston Marathon just one reminder of why this is important. She adds: "Recently, Russian violence has shown a tendency to spill over its borders, as the murders and unexplained deaths in Great Britain over the past few years show. London has become a refuge for Russian money and the setting for a real-life Russian crime thriller of baffling intricacy; drawing in governments, secret services and big business and inevitably giving rise to lurid media stereotypes. ̽��ֱ��many books that were sent to the judges of the prize by publishers give a most encouraging picture of the deeper understanding of Russian culture available to readers curious about the realities behind these stereotypes. They included books on the revival of Russian Orthodoxy, the fate of the discipline of archaeology in the USSR and the films of the director Andrei Tarkovsky.”

̽��ֱ��six shortlisted books trace a path from 1917 to the present day. Dr Polonsky says: "Together these books show that the political, economic, cultural and social spheres are inseparable. At one end of this century-long span is Douglas Smith’s Former People, which tells the story of the aristocrats who remained in Russia after the revolution, to perish or survive as Soviet citizens. At the other is Masha Gessen’s portrait of Vladimir Putin in ̽��ֱ��Man without a Face, which describes how the personality and convictions of Russia’s present leader were shaped by the rough culture of post-war Leningrad and his years as a low-ranking agent in the KGB.��

"Karl Schloegel’s Moscow 1937 is a cultural history of the capital city in the darkest year of Stalin’s Great Terror, which covers everything from town planning to show trials, and begins with a scene of magical flight from Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, ̽��ֱ��Master and Margarita. Anne Applebaum’s Iron Curtain shows how the Soviet takeover of political power in Eastern Europe after 1945 depended on a takeover of all aspects of cultural, social and private life. She revives the word ‘totalitarianism’, which had fallen out of fashion among historians.�� Donald Raleigh’s oral history, Soviet Baby Boomers, is a portrait of the last, ‘post-totalitarian’, Soviet generation. In the background to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Putinism is the story of Russian oil, which is told in Thane Gustafson’s Wheel of Fortune."

̽��ֱ��other judges for the Prize, which includes £5,000 in cash, are Sir Rodric Braithwaite (Chair), former British ambassador to Moscow and author of Afgantsy: ̽��ֱ��Russians in Afghanistan 1979-1989; Lord Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at Warwick ̽��ֱ�� and author of How Much is Enough?; AD Miller, Economist journalist and author of the Man Booker shortlisted Snowdrops; and Dmitri Trenin, Director of ̽��ֱ��Carnegie Moscow Center and author of Post-Imperium.

Dr Polonsky says: "We live in an age of unprecedented access to information. Researchers have greater freedom than ever to travel in Russia and are rich in contacts with Russians of all kinds, if they choose to seek them out. In turn, Russians now have access to books written about Russia in the West, many of which are now translated into Russian. ̽��ֱ��result is a constantly enriched field of writing about all aspects of Russian culture, which the Pushkin House prize is intended to cultivate and celebrate."