Former Kennan Institute/Wilson Center Scholars Honored

The Kennan Institute is pleased to announce the following awards and honors given to Kennan Institute and Woodrow Wilson Center scholars for research and writings related to Russia and the Soviet Union completed in part at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

For strongly advocating human rights, effectively protesting crimes against humanity, and promoting the social responsibilities of health care professionals and scientists, Walter Reich, the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior at George Washington University, has been named to receive the highly coveted American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2003 Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. Reich is also a Senior Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a Contributing Editor of The Wilson Quarterly. While at the Woodrow Wilson Center, he studied the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union; the psychology of terrorism; and the scientific, ethical and public policy dimensions of health care.

Bertrand M. Patenaude, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Title VIII-Supported Research Scholar, Kennan Institute, shares with one other author the 2003 Marshal Shulman Book Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS). Patenaude's book, The Big Show in Bololand: The American Relief Expedition to Soviet Russia in the Famine of 1921 (Stanford University Press), portrays an American relief expedition to Soviet Russia in 1921 to mitigate the impact of the famine that killed millions. The AAASS award committee praised Patenaude's work for being "an outstanding example of lively and engaging prose, impressive historical research, and persuasive analysis of the diplomatic underpinnings and consequences of the rescue mission."

The Economist has selected books written by former Woodrow Wilson Center Fellows William Taubman, Professor, Department of Political Science, Amherst College, and Andrew Meier, Contributor, Time Europe, as among the best of 2003. Taubman's book, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (Norton), was recognized as "a masterly biography, by an American academic, that looks at how Nikita Khrushchev—the most impulsive and mercurial of Soviet leaders—publicly condemned the oppressive, inflexible and fearful state that Stalin created, yet never succeeded in breaking free from it." The Economist writes about Meier's book, Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall (WW Norton): "There is depth to Andrew Meier's portrait of Russia, but breadth as well. The treasures lie in his love for the country and the nuances that emerge from his encounters with Russian soldiers, politicians, pensioners and public servants." Both authors presented their books at book launches at the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2003.