Memorial France is pleased to invite you to celebrate the publication of Benjamin Nathans 2025 Pulitzer Prize winning new book.
In this remarkable book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause, Benjamin Nathans explores the emergence of the dissident movement in the Soviet Union. How did dissidents reshape notions of law and freedom within the Soviet system? What intellectual and moral dynamics enabled challenges to Soviet power from within? How does this history inform our understanding of the present-day silent protests in Russia?
Benjamin Nathans is Professor of European History at the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches and writes on Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, modern European Jewish history, and the history of human rights. He is the author of Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter With Late Imperial Russia (Berkeley, 2002), which won the Koret Prize for Jewish History, the Vucinich Prize for Russian, Eurasian, and East European Studies, the Lincoln Prize for Russian History, and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in History. He is also shortlisted for the Pushkin House Book Prize 2024 (winner yet to be announced).