We are very proud to share that Dr Rory Finnin has been awarded the 2023 Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies for his book Blood of Others: Stalin’s Crimean Atrocity and the Poetics of Solidarity (Toronto, 2022). He shares the prize with Adrienne Edgar for her book Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples: Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia (Cornell, 2022)

The Joseph Rothschild Prize in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies is awarded annually by the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) for an outstanding book published in the previous calendar year on Russia, Eastern Europe or Eurasia (including the Balkans, Central Europe, the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Afghanistan, and China) in which substantial attention is paid to questions of ethnicity and/or nationalism.

The Rothschild Prize Committee wrote: “Rory Finnin’s Blood of Others is a timely and brilliantly insightful study of the role of literature in highlighting the injustice of the deportation of Crimean Tatars from their homeland in 1944 and their continued decades-long forced exile in Central Asia and Siberia. It shows how poetry played a galvanizing role in focusing attention on the suffering of the Crimean Tatars, both within the Soviet Union and in the international community.”

In May 2023 Finnin was also awarded the 2021-22 Best Book Prize from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies (AAUS) for Blood of Others. He shares the prize with Emily Channell-Justice for her book Without the State: Self-Organization and Political Activism in Ukraine (Toronto, 2022).

The AAUS Book Prize is awarded for the best scholarly monograph-length work in the field of Ukrainian history, politics, language, literature and culture published in English.

The AAUS Book Prize Committee wrote: Finnin’s Blood of Others “not only brings diverse experiences of displacement and brutality in the past to bear on the critical moment of Ukraine’s present, but also provides an excellent example for future scholars to draw upon literature, culture, and empirical observation in critical analyses that reveal the intertwined and highly nuanced ties between peoples from the territories of modern Ukraine, Crimea, Turkey, and the entire Black Sea region.”

Below Rory Finnin discusses Blood of Others in conversation with James Meek at the European Parliament Liaison Office in the United Kingdom. The book launch, coorganised by the Ukrainian Institute London, was held on 25 November 2022.