Johns Hopkins professor Sergey Radchenko has won the 2025 Lionel Gelber Prize for his deep dive into the Cold War.

Radchenko’s To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power (Cambridge University Press) was one of five books shortlisted for this year’s $50,000 award.

The prize, presented annually by the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, is given to the top book on international affairs published in English.

Radchenko, a native of Sakhalin Island, Russia, studied in the U.S., Hong Kong, and the U.K., and is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He has written about the Cold War, nuclear history, and on Russian and Chinese foreign policy. His previous works include Two Suns in the Heavens: The Sino-Soviet Struggle for Supremacy (Wilson Center Press & Stanford University Press, 2009), and Unwanted Visionaries: The Soviet Failure in Asia (Oxford University Press, 2014).

“Sergey Radchenko has written a masterpiece,” Stein said in a press release. “To Run the World made me think differently about the Cold War that took place last century and think differently about what Russia is doing now. Rich in original material, laced with wonderful stories so beautifully told, this is a magisterial history for our times.”

This year’s winning and shortlisted titles were selected by an international jury comprised of chair Janice Gross Stein, John Bew, Francis J. Gavin, Iain Martin, and Nina Srinivasan Rathbun.

The prize ceremony and lecture by the winner will take place on April 9 at the Munk School.