The Longlist for the PolitProsvet Special Award Has Been Announced

  • 7 Jul 2026

  • Today, July 7, the longlist for the PolitProsvet Special Award of the the Enlightener Prize was announced. This year's longlist features 13 books that help readers make sense of contemporary Russia's political and social realities: the nature and evolution of Russian autocracy, the phenomenon of the "digital Gulag," the crisis of legal institutions, and the country's historical trajectory from the Mongol conquest to the present day.
    The 2026 PolitProsvet Special Award longlist includes:

    1. Timur Atnashev. Bureaucracy, or Order Without a Master. St. Petersburg: European University at St. Petersburg Press, 2025.
    2. Andrei Arkhangelsky. The Country That Chose Not to Be. Berlin: Freedom Letters, 2025.
    3. Roman Badanin, Mikhail Rubin. The Tsar Himself: How Vladimir Putin Deceived Us All. BAbook, 2026.
    4. Ilya Venyavkin. The Temple of War: The People and Ideas That Made Russia's Invasion of Ukraine Possible. Riga: Meduza / StraightForward, 2025.
    5. Konstantin Gaaze. Where Do Dictatorships Drift? Russian Autocracy and the Invasion of Ukraine. Riga: Meduza, 2025.
    6. Sergey Girin. From 3+5 to Z: The Language of One War. FRESH Verlag, 2025.
    7. Andrei Zakharov. Russian Cyberpunk: How the Kremlin and the Oligarchs Are Building a "Digital Gulag"—and Who Is Resisting It. Berlin: Echo Books / StraightForward, 2025.
    8. Elena Lukyanova. The Fundamental Law: Constitutional Theory and Russian Practice. Riga: Free University Press, 2026.
    9. Leonid Nikitinsky. Concepts: A Short Course in Lawlessness for Future Sociologists and Lawyers. Freedom Letters / Novaya Gazeta, 2026.
    10. Konstantin Pakhalyuk. In Search of "Russian Antiquity": The Conservative Turn and the Politics of Memory in the Regions of Central Russia (the 2010s–Early 2022). Chișinău: The Historical Expertise, 2026.
    11. Alexandra Prokopenko. Accomplices: Why the Russian Elite Chose War. Echo books / StraightForward, 2025.
    12. Sasha Skochilenko, S. M. Favorsky. My Prison Trip. Riga: Freedom Letters, 2025.
    13. Dmitry Travin. Russia's Path from Yeltsin to Batu: History in Reverse. Moscow: New Literary Observer, 2025.

    Earlier, on June 25, the longlists for the the Enlightener Prize and the Enlightener Prize. Translation were also announced, recognizing the year's best Russian-language popular science books and outstanding works in translation.
    The shortlists for all categories of the the Enlightener Prize will be announced by the end of September.