Conquest prize 2025
The Conquest Prize for Contribution to Holodomor Studies is awarded on a biennial basis to the author of an outstanding article that contributes to a fuller understanding of the Holodomor. A jury of eminent specialists is assembled to determine the winner of the $2500 CAD prize. The Conquest Prize honours historian Robert Conquest, author of the groundbreaking work The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, which marked a watershed in the study of the Holodomor at the time of its publication in 1986.
ABOUT ROBERT CONQUEST
The Robert Conquest Prize honours historian Robert Conquest, author of the groundbreaking work The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Published in 1986, Harvest of Sorrow marked a watershed in the study of the Ukrainian Famine of 1932-33. Dr. Conquest’s comprehensive treatment addressed the role of Communist ideology and its relationship to the peasantry, collectivization policy and implementation, the deportation of kulaks, issues of nationality and religion in the Soviet Union, and the role of Stalin in the Famine. Dr. Conquest described the failure of the West to respond to reports of the Famine and assigned culpability to Stalin and his regime for setting impossibly high grain requisitions, seizing foodstuffs, preventing the starving from seeking food elsewhere, and covering up the crime. Based on eyewitness testimonies, his analysis and conclusions were corroborated by Soviet archival materials that became accessible with the collapse of the USSR.
Harvest of Sorrow sparked debates in academic and political circles and ensured widespread awareness of the Holodomor. In a legacy marked by achievement, Harvest of Sorrow is certainly one of Robert Conquest’s greatest accomplishments.
NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2025 CONQUEST PRIZE
Eligibility:
Nominated articles must have been published in English, in print or in an online publication, between September 30, 2022, and the submission deadline, which is January 20, 2025. Articles published in English translation are eligible. Nominations may be submitted by the author, editor, publisher, or colleagues. Please send the following items as attachments to hrec@ualberta.ca using the subject line Conquest Prize submission:
1) Completed APPLICATION FORM
2) PDF of the article
3) CV of the author
4) Abstract of the article (in English, max. one page)
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Conquest Prize for Contribution to Holodomor Studies
The winners of the 2025 Conquest Prize for Contribution to Holodomor Studies are Andrei Markevich, Natalya Naumenko, and Nancy Quian for their article “The Causes of Ukrainian Famine Mortality, 1932-33,” published by in Review of Economic Studies (September 2024). A jury of eminent specialists determined the winner of the $2500 CAD prize which is awarded biannually to the author of an outstanding article that contributes to a fuller understanding of the Holodomor.
University of Melbourne's Mark Edele, a member of the Prize jury, remarked “After all the acrimonious debate on the origins of the famine and the question of genocide, I thought it extremely unlikely that new empirical conclusions could be reached. I was clearly wrong. The researchers have constructed an extremely impressive data set, and the sophisticated statistical analysis is well above what we usually see in the Holodomor debate, or in contemporary historical debate more generally. These research findings put to bed conclusively the theses of lack of intentionality on the part of the Soviet authorities.”
Jury member historian Andrea Graziosi commented, “This research team has produced what could be termed the definitive analysis of the causes of the Holodomor and have published it in one of the most respected journals in economics. In addition to its scholarly value, the article will thus have a remarkable impact worldwide, well beyond the specialized fields of Soviet or Ukrainian history. Given the findings and the extreme sophistication of the methodology, it should now be most difficult, if not impossible, to deny or even minimize in an academic publication the intentional causes of the famine and Stalin's and the Soviet regime's crucial role in it”.
The Conquest Prize honours historian Robert Conquest, author of the groundbreaking work The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, which marked a watershed in the study of the Holodomor at the time of its publication in 1986.
