The organizers of the Enlightener Prize, awarded to the best popular science books in the Russian language, have published a long list of nominees for the special PolitProsvet Prize.
The long list includes 13 books that “help to understand modern social and political realities in Russia: the nature and development of Russian tyranny, the phenomenon of the “digital gulag,” the crisis of legal institutions, and the country’s historical paths from Batu to the present day.”
The list includes two books published by Meduza Publishing House:
- Timur Atnashev. “Bureaucracy, or order without a master.”
- Andrei Arkhangelsky. “A country that decided it wouldn’t be like that.”
- Roman Badanin, Mikhail Rubin. “The king himself. How Vladimir Putin fooled us all.”
- Sergey Girin. “From 3+5 to Z: One Language of War.”
- Andrei Zakharov. “Russian cyberpunk. How the Kremlin and oligarchs are building ‘digital gulags’—and who is resisting them.”
- Elena Lukyanova. “Basic Law: Constitutional Theory and Russian Practice”.
- Leonid Nikitinsky. “Concepts. A flawed short course for future sociologists and lawyers.”
- Konstantin Pakhalyuk. “In Search of ‘Russian Antiquity.’ The ‘Conservative Turn’ and the Politics of Memory in the Central Russian Regions (2010–early 2022).”
- Alexandra Prokopenko. “Accomplices. Why the Russian elite chose war.”
- Sasha Skoshilenko, S.M. Favorsky. “My trip to prison.”
- Dimitri Travin. “Russia’s Trajectories from Yeltsin to Batu: A Reverse Story.”
The shortlist of Enlightenment Award nominees will be known at the end of September 2026.
The Meduza publishing house publishes books that cannot be published in Russia due to censorship. Now in our “store” you can buy not only paper, but also electronic versions of books. This is one of the easiest ways to support our editors and publishing project.
The award was established by Dmitry Zimin’s Dynasty Foundation, which ceased operations in 2015 after the organization was declared a “foreign agent.” After that, the Ximen Foundation began supporting the award. Awarded to the best popular scientific books in the Russian language.