TIP Professor Wins Pulitzer for Book on Soviet Dissent September 8, 2025 – Posted in: Uncategorized

TIP Seminar Leader Benjamin Nathans won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction for his book To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement.

Benjamin Nathans is a historian and critically acclaimed professor at the University of Pennsylvania where he has taught since 1998. During his long tenure, he has devoted over four decades to the study of Soviet and Russian history, modern Jewish history, and the history of human rights. He has gained widespread recognition for his thorough examination of Soviet dissidents’ intellectual and moral struggle against the Soviet state. Nathans’ TIP Seminar, “The Soviet Century,” explored the emergence and legacy of the Soviet Union as an ambitious but ultimately failed twentieth century political experiment.

The course dedicated time to understanding the role of ideology in shaping the Soviet state’s policy and everyday life under communism. Participants used fiction and nonfiction texts to gain an understanding of cultural conflict in the Soviet Union, and the role that antisemitism and racism played in that society. The exploration of these social topics within the Soviet state created a framework for understanding the dynamic which led to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The teachers who participated in Nathans’ TIP seminar created curriculum units that helped weave a foundational understanding of Soviet history. Keeler Park’s “The Pulse of the Land” focuses on the ways that war shapes history. This unit engages students with different works of art as primary sources to help them evaluate the effects of conflict and its lasting impact on lived experience. A unit by Tyriese Holloway, “We Are Not Alone: Cold War (Black) Radical Unionism, Internationalism, and the World After George Floyd” helps students examine the history of internationalism during the Civil Rights Movement. Finally, Chloe Glynn’s “Economics, Abundance, and Value, or How Much Is Too Much Salami?” asks students to consider how capitalist and Marxist societies approach the valuation of consumer goods (in this case, food) differently.

You can learn more about Professor Nathans’ journey to his Pulitzer Prize win here.