From: Deutsher Memorial Prize Committee <deutsche@deutscherprize.org.uk>
List Editor: Dave Pretty <prettyd@WINTHROP.EDU>
Subject: Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize
Author's Subject: Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize
Date Written: Tue, 6 Dec 2005
From Sandy Nicoll, on behalf of the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Committee
The 2005 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize has been awarded to: Kevin Murphy for "Revolution and Counterrevolution, Class Struggle in a Moscow Metal Factory" published by Berghahn Books.
"Kevin Murphy has written an important book. It steers a course between the prevailing historical orthodoxy that dismisses the Russian Revolution of October 1917 as a disastrous aberration and the so-called 'revisionists' who have portrayed Stalinism as a phenomenon with strong popular roots. Murphy's study of the Guzhon Metal Works in Moscow documents both the active participation of workers in the 1917 revolutions and their sullen acquiescence in and fragmented resistance to the so-called 'Stalin revolution' - better counter-revolution - at the end of the 1920s. Broadly speaking, it is a vindication of what one might call, after Isaac Deutscher, the classical Marxist interpretation of the Russian Revolution.
"To my mind the most interesting finding of the book was its demonstration that quite an active and diverse political life continued, if not always exactly to flourish, certainly to survive in the Guzhon Metal Works through the NEP period (1921-8), indicating the extent to which some degree of political pluralism survived at the popular level after the Civil War. Kevin Murphy has thus significantly deepened our understanding of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath."
Alex Callinicos, Professor of European Studies, King's College London and Isaac and member of Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize Committee
For further information about the Prize, visit www.deutscherprize.org.uk
Nominations are invited for the 2006 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize.
This prize is awarded annually for a book which exemplifies the best and most innovative new writing in or about the Marxist tradition.
The closing date for nominations (covering books published from May 2005 - May 2006) is May 1st 2006.
To nominate a book, please complete the nomination form on the website or send publisher's information plus two copies (if available) to:
Isaac & Tamara Deutscher Prize Committee
Faculty of Law and Social Sciences
SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
United Kingdom.