The Nobel Prize in Literature began to be awarded in 1901. Several times the awards were not held - in 1914, 1918, 1935, 1940-1943. Current laureates, chairmen of authors' unions, professors of literature and members of scientific academies can nominate other writers for the award. Until 1950, information about the nominees was public, and then they began to name only the names of the winners.
For five consecutive years, from 1902 to 1906, Leo Tolstoy was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In 1906, Tolstoy wrote a letter to the Finnish writer and translator Arvid Järnefelt, in which he asked him to convince his Swedish colleagues “to try to make sure that they don’t award me this prize,” because “if this happened, it would be very unpleasant for me to refuse.”
As a result, the prize was awarded in 1906 to the Italian poet Giosue Carducci. Tolstoy was glad that he was spared the prize: “Firstly, it saved me from a great difficulty - to manage this money, which, like any money, in my opinion, can only bring evil; and secondly, it gave me the honor and great pleasure to receive expressions of sympathy from so many persons, although not familiar to me, but nevertheless deeply respected by me.
In 1902, another Russian, a lawyer, judge, orator and writer Anatoly Koni, also ran for the award. By the way, Koni had been friends with Tolstoy since 1887, he corresponded with the count and met him many times in Moscow. On the basis of Koni's memoirs about one of Tolstov's cases, "Resurrection" was written. And Koni himself wrote the work "Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy".
Koni himself was nominated for an award for his biographical essay on Dr. Haase, who devoted his life to the struggle to improve the lives of prisoners and exiles. Subsequently, some literary critics spoke of Koni's nomination as a "curiosity".
In 1914, the writer and poet Dmitry Merezhkovsky, the husband of the poetess Zinaida Gippius, was nominated for the award for the first time. In total, Merezhkovsky was nominated 10 times.
In 1914, Merezhkovsky was nominated for the prize after the release of his 24-volume collected works. However, this year the prize was not awarded due to the outbreak of the World War.
Later, Merezhkovsky was nominated as an émigré writer. In 1930 he was again nominated for the Nobel Prize. But here Merezhkovsky finds himself in competition with another outstanding Russian émigré literature, Ivan Bunin.
According to one of the legends, Merezhkovsky offered Bunin to conclude a pact. “If I get the Nobel Prize, I will give you half, if you - you give me. Let's split it in half. Let's insure each other." Bunin refused. Merezhkovsky was never awarded the prize.
In 1916, Ivan Franko, a Ukrainian writer and poet, became a nominee. He died before the award could be considered. With rare exceptions, Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.
In 1918, Maxim Gorky was nominated for the prize, but again it was decided not to present the award.
The year 1923 becomes "fruitful" for Russian and Soviet writers. Ivan Bunin (for the first time), Konstantin Balmont (pictured) and again Maxim Gorky were nominated for the award. Thanks for this to the writer Romain Rolland, who nominated all three. But the award is given to the Irishman William Gates.
In 1926, a Russian émigré, Tsarist Cossack General Pyotr Krasnov, became the nominee. After the revolution, he fought with the Bolsheviks, created the state of the Great Don Army, but later was forced to join Denikin's army, and then retire. In 1920 he emigrated, until 1923 he lived in Germany, then in Paris.
Since 1936, Krasnov lived in Nazi Germany. He did not recognize the Bolsheviks, he helped anti-Bolshevik organizations. During the war years, he collaborated with the Nazis, considered their aggression against the USSR as a war exclusively with the Communists, and not with the people. In 1945 he was captured by the British, handed over by the Soviets and in 1947 hanged in the Lefortovo prison.
Among other things, Krasnov was a prolific writer, he published 41 books. His most popular novel was the epic From the Double-Headed Eagle to the Red Banner. Slavic philologist Vladimir Frantsev nominated Krasnov for the Nobel Prize. Can you imagine if in 1926 he miraculously won the prize? How would you argue now about this person and this award?
In 1931 and 1932, in addition to the already familiar nominees Merezhkovsky and Bunin, Ivan Shmelev was nominated for the award. In 1931, his novel Praying Man was published.
In 1933, the first Russian-speaking writer, Ivan Bunin, received the Nobel Prize. The wording is "For the strict skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose." Bunin did not really like the wording, he wanted more to be awarded for poetry.
On YouTube, you can find a very murky video in which Ivan Bunin reads out his address on the Nobel Prize.
After the news of the award, Bunin stopped by to visit Merezhkovsky and Gippius. “Congratulations,” the poetess told him, “and I envy you.” Not everyone agreed with the decision of the Nobel Committee. Marina Tsvetaeva, for example, wrote that Gorky deserved much more.
Bonus, 170331 kroons, Bunin actually squandered. The poet and literary critic Zinaida Shakhovskaya recalled: “Having returned to France, Ivan Alekseevich ... apart from money, began to arrange feasts, distribute “allowances” to emigrants, and donate funds to support various societies. Finally, on the advice of well-wishers, he invested the remaining amount in some kind of “win-win business” and was left with nothing.
In 1949, emigrant Mark Aldanov (pictured) and three Soviet writers at once were nominated for the award - Boris Pasternak, Mikhail Sholokhov and Leonid Leonov. The award was given to William Faulkner.
In 1958, Boris Pasternak received the Nobel Prize "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel."
Pasternak received the award, having previously been nominated six times. It was last nominated by Albert Camus.
In the Soviet Union, the persecution of the writer immediately began. At the initiative of Suslov (pictured), the Presidium of the Central Committee of the CPSU adopts a resolution labeled "Top Secret" "On B. Pasternak's slanderous novel."
"Recognize that the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak's novel, which slanderously depicts the October Socialist Revolution, the Soviet people who made this revolution, and the building of socialism in the USSR, is an act hostile to our country and an instrument of international reaction aimed at fomenting the Cold War" , the resolution said.
From a note by Suslov on the day the prize was awarded: "Organize and publish a collective performance by the most prominent Soviet writers, in which they evaluate the award of the prize to Pasternak as a desire to ignite the Cold War."
The persecution of the writer began in the newspapers and at numerous meetings. From the transcript of the all-Moscow meeting of writers: “There is no poet more distant from the people than B. Pasternak, a poet more aesthetic, in whose work the pre-revolutionary decadence preserved in its original purity would sound like this. All the poetic work of B. Pasternak lay outside the real traditions of Russian poetry, which always warmly responded to all events in the life of its people.
Writer Sergei Smirnov: “Finally, I was offended by this novel, as a soldier of the Patriotic War, as a man who had to cry over the graves of his dead comrades during the war, as a man who now has to write about the heroes of the war, about the heroes of the Brest Fortress, about others wonderful war heroes who revealed the heroism of our people with amazing power.
"Thus, comrades, the novel Doctor Zhivago, in my deep conviction, is an apology for betrayal."
Critic Kornely Zelinsky: “I have a very heavy feeling from reading this novel. I felt literally spat upon. My whole life seemed spat upon in this novel. Everything that I have invested in for 40 years, creative energy, hopes, hopes - all this was spat on.
Unfortunately, Pasternak was smashed not only by mediocrity. Poet Boris Slutsky (pictured): “A poet must seek recognition from his people, and not from his enemies. The poet must seek glory in his native land, and not from an overseas uncle. Gentlemen, the Swedish academicians know about the Soviet land only that the Battle of Poltava, which they hate, and the October Revolution, which they hate even more, took place there (noise in the hall). What is our literature to them?
Writers' meetings were held throughout the country, at which Pasternak's novel was denounced as slanderous, hostile, mediocre, and so on. Rallies were held at the factories against Pasternak and his novel.
From a letter from Pasternak to the Presidium of the Board of the Union of Writers of the USSR: “I thought that my joy at the award of the Nobel Prize to me would not remain alone, that it would touch the society of which I am a part. In my eyes, the honor given to me, a modern writer living in Russia and, consequently, to the Soviet one, shown at the same time to all Soviet literature. I am sorry that I was so blind and deluded.”
Under enormous pressure, Pasternak decided to withdraw the prize. “Because of the significance that the award awarded to me has received in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it. Do not take my voluntary refusal as an insult,” he wrote in a telegram to the Nobel Committee. Until his death in 1960, Pasternak remained in disgrace, although he was not arrested or expelled.
It is now Pasternak is being erected monuments, his talent is recognized. Then the hunted writer was on the verge of suicide. In the poem "Nobel Prize" Pasternak wrote: "What did I do for dirty tricks, / I am a murderer and a villain? / I made the whole world cry / Over the beauty of my land." After the publication of the poem abroad, the Prosecutor General of the USSR Roman Rudenko promised to bring Pasternak under the article "Treason to the Motherland." But not attracted.
In 1965, the Soviet writer Mikhail Sholokhov received the prize - "For the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia."
The Soviet authorities viewed Sholokhov as a "counterweight" to Pasternak in the fight for the Nobel Prize. In the 1950s, lists of nominees were not yet published, but the USSR knew that Sholokhov was being considered as a possible contender. Through diplomatic channels, the Swedes were hinted that the USSR would highly appreciate the presentation of the award to this Soviet writer.
In 1964, the prize was awarded to Jean-Paul Sartre, but he refused it and expressed regret (among other things) that the prize was not awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov. This predetermined the decision of the Nobel Committee next year.
During the presentation, Mikhail Sholokhov did not bow to King Gustav Adolf VI, who presented the award. According to one version, this was done on purpose, and Sholokhov said: “We, the Cossacks, do not bow to anyone. Here in front of the people - please, but I will not be in front of the king and that's it ... "
1970 - a new blow to the image of the Soviet state. The prize was awarded to the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Solzhenitsyn holds the record for the speed of literary recognition. From the moment of the first publication to the award of the last prize, only eight years. Nobody has been able to do this.
As in the case of Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn immediately began to persecute. The Ogonyok magazine published a letter from the American singer Dean Reed, popular in the USSR, who convinced Solzhenitsyn that everything was in order in the USSR, but in the USA - complete seams.
Dean Reed: “It is America, not the Soviet Union, who wages wars and creates a tense environment of possible wars in order to enable their economy to operate, and our dictators, the military-industrial complex to amass even more wealth and power from the blood of the Vietnamese people, our own American soldiers and all the freedom-loving peoples of the world! A sick society is in my homeland, and not in yours, Mr. Solzhenitsyn!
However, Solzhenitsyn, who went through prison, camps and exile, was not too frightened by the censure in the press. He continued literary creativity, dissident work. The authorities hinted to him that it would be better to leave the country, but he refused. Only in 1974, after the release of the Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn was deprived of Soviet citizenship and forcibly expelled from the country.
In 1987, the award was received by Joseph Brodsky, at that time a US citizen. The prize was awarded "For comprehensive creativity, saturated with clarity of thought and passion of poetry."
US citizen Joseph Brodsky wrote the Nobel speech in Russian. She became part of his literary manifesto. Brodsky spoke more about literature, but there was also a place for historical and political remarks. The poet, for example, put the regimes of Hitler and Stalin on the same level.
Brodsky: “This generation - the generation that was born just when the Auschwitz crematoria were operating at full capacity, when Stalin was at the zenith of god-like, absolute, by nature itself, it seemed, sanctioned power, appeared in the world, apparently to continue what theoretically, it should have been interrupted in these crematoria and in the unmarked common graves of the Stalinist archipelago.
Since 1987, the Nobel Prize has not been awarded to Russian writers. Among the contenders, Vladimir Sorokin (pictured), Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Mikhail Shishkin, as well as Zakhar Prilepin and Viktor Pelevin are usually named.
In 2015, the Belarusian writer and journalist Svetlana Aleksievich sensationally receives the award. She wrote such works as "War has no woman's face", "Zinc Boys", "Charmed by Death", "Chernobyl Prayer", "Second Hand Time" and others. A rather rare event in recent years, when the award was given to a person who writes in Russian.
The Nobel Committee has been silent about its work for a long time, and only after 50 years does it reveal information about how the prize was awarded. On January 2, 2018, it became known that Konstantin Paustovsky was among the 70 candidates for the 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The company was very worthy: Samuel Beckett, Louis Aragon, Alberto Moravia, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Yasunari Kawabata, Graham Greene, Wisten Hugh Auden. That year the Academy awarded the Guatemalan writer Miguel Angel Asturias "for his living literary achievements, deeply rooted in the national traits and traditions of the indigenous peoples of Latin America." 
The name of Konstantin Paustovsky was proposed by a member of the Swedish Academy, Eivind Junson, but the Nobel Committee rejected his candidacy with the wording: “The Committee would like to emphasize its interest in this proposal for a Russian writer, but for natural reasons it should be put aside for the time being.” It is difficult to say what "natural causes" we are talking about. It remains only to cite the known facts.
In 1965, Paustovsky was already nominated for the Nobel Prize. It was an unusual year, because among the nominees for the award were four Russian writers at once - Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Sholokhov, Konstantin Paustovsky, Vladimir Nabokov. In the end, Mikhail Sholokhov received the prize, so as not to irritate the Soviet authorities too much after the previous Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak, whose award caused a huge scandal.
The prize for literature was first awarded in 1901. Since then, six authors writing in Russian have received it. Some of them cannot be attributed either to the USSR or to Russia in connection with questions of citizenship. However, their instrument was the Russian language, and this is the main thing.
Ivan Bunin becomes the first Russian Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933, taking the top on his fifth attempt. As subsequent history will show, this will not be the longest path to the Nobel. 
The award was presented with the wording "for the rigorous skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose."
In 1958, the Nobel Prize went to a representative of Russian literature for the second time. Boris Pasternak was noted "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel." 
For Pasternak himself, the award brought nothing but problems and a campaign under the slogan “I didn’t read it, but I condemn it!”. It was about the novel "Doctor Zhivago", which was published abroad, which at that time was equated with a betrayal of the motherland. Even the fact that the novel was published in Italy by a communist publishing house did not save the situation. The writer was forced to refuse the award under the threat of expulsion from the country and threats against his family and loved ones. The Swedish Academy recognized Pasternak's refusal of the prize as forced and in 1989 presented a diploma and a medal to his son. This time there were no incidents.
In 1965, Mikhail Sholokhov became the third recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia." 
It was the "correct" award from the point of view of the USSR, especially since the state supported the writer's candidacy directly.
In 1970, the Nobel Prize in Literature went to Alexander Solzhenitsyn "for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature." 
The Nobel Committee made excuses for a long time that its decision was not political, as the Soviet authorities claimed. Supporters of the version about the political nature of the award note two things - only eight years have passed from the moment of the first publication of Solzhenitsyn to the award of the award, which cannot be compared with other laureates. Moreover, by the time the prize was awarded, neither The Gulag Archipelago nor The Red Wheel had been published.
The fifth Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987 was the émigré poet Joseph Brodsky, awarded "for his all-encompassing work, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity." 
The poet was forcibly sent into exile in 1972 and had American citizenship at the time of the award.
Already in the 21st century, in 2015, that is, 28 years later, Svetlana Aleksievich receives the Nobel Prize as a representative of Belarus. And again, there was some scandal. Many writers, public figures and politicians were rejected by the ideological position of Aleksievich, others believed that her works were ordinary journalism and had nothing to do with artistic creativity. 
In any case, a new page has opened in the history of the Nobel Prize. For the first time, the prize was awarded not to a writer, but to a journalist.
Thus, almost all decisions of the Nobel Committee concerning writers from Russia had a political or ideological background. This began as early as 1901, when Swedish academics addressed a letter to Tolstoy, calling him "the venerable patriarch of modern literature" and "one of those powerful penetrating poets, which in this case should be remembered first of all."
The main message of the letter was the desire of academicians to justify their decision not to award the prize to Leo Tolstoy. Academicians wrote that the great writer himself "never aspired to such an award." Leo Tolstoy thanked in response: “I was very pleased that the Nobel Prize was not awarded to me ... This saved me from a great difficulty - to manage this money, which, like any money, in my opinion, can only bring evil.”
Forty-nine Swedish writers, led by August Strindberg and Selma Lagerlöf, wrote a letter of protest to the Nobel academicians. All in all, the great Russian writer was nominated for the award for five years in a row, the last time it was in 1906, four years before his death. It was then that the writer turned to the committee with a request not to award him the prize, so that he would not have to refuse later. 
Today, the opinions of those experts who excommunicated Tolstoy from the prize have become the property of history. Among them is Professor Alfred Jensen, who believed that the philosophy of the late Tolstoy was contrary to the will of Alfred Nobel, who dreamed of an "idealistic orientation" of his works. And "War and Peace" is completely "devoid of understanding of history." The secretary of the Swedish Academy, Karl Virsen, even more categorically formulated his point of view on the impossibility of awarding the prize to Tolstoy: "This writer condemned all forms of civilization and insisted in return for them to adopt a primitive way of life, cut off from all the establishments of high culture."
Among those who became a nominee, but did not have the honor of giving the Nobel lecture, there are many big names.
This is Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1914, 1915, 1930-1937) 
Maxim Gorky (1918, 1923, 1928, 1933) 
Konstantin Balmont (1923) 
Pyotr Krasnov (1926) 
Ivan Shmelev (1931) 
Mark Aldanov (1938, 1939) 
Nikolai Berdyaev (1944, 1945, 1947) 
As you can see, the list of nominees includes mainly those Russian writers who were in exile at the time of the nomination. This series has been replenished with new names.
This is Boris Zaitsev (1962) 
Vladimir Nabokov (1962) 
Of the Soviet Russian writers, only Leonid Leonov (1950) was on the list. 
Anna Akhmatova, of course, can only be considered a Soviet writer conditionally, because she had the citizenship of the USSR. The only time she was in the Nobel nomination in 1965. 
If you wish, you can name more than one Russian writer who has earned the title of Nobel Prize winner for his work. For example, Joseph Brodsky in his Nobel lecture mentioned three Russian poets who would be worthy to be on the Nobel podium. These are Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva and Anna Akhmatova.
The further history of the Nobel nominations will surely reveal many more interesting things to us.
On December 10, 1901, the world's first Nobel Prize was awarded. Since then, five Russian writers have received this Literary Prize.
1933, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive such a high award - the Nobel Prize in Literature. It happened in 1933, when Bunin had been living in exile in Paris for several years. The prize was awarded to Ivan Bunin "for the strict skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose." It was about the largest work of the writer - the novel "The Life of Arseniev".
Accepting the award, Ivan Alekseevich said that he was the first exile awarded the Nobel Prize. Together with the diploma, Bunin received a check for 715 thousand French francs. With Nobel money, he could live comfortably until the end of his days. But they quickly ran out. Bunin spent them very easily, generously distributed them to needy emigrant colleagues. He invested part of it in a business that, as he was promised by "well-wishers", a win-win, and went bankrupt.
It was after receiving the Nobel Prize that Bunin's all-Russian fame grew into worldwide fame. Every Russian in Paris, even those who have not yet read a single line of this writer, took it as a personal holiday.
1958, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
For Pasternak, this high award and recognition turned into a real persecution in his homeland.
Boris Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize more than once - from 1946 to 1950. And in October 1958 he was awarded this award. This happened just after the publication of his novel Doctor Zhivago. The prize was awarded to Pasternak "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel."
Immediately after receiving the telegram from the Swedish Academy, Pasternak replied "extremely grateful, touched and proud, amazed and embarrassed." But after it became known about the award of the prize to him, the newspapers Pravda and Literaturnaya Gazeta attacked the poet with indignant articles, awarding him with epithets, "traitor", "slanderer", "Judas". Pasternak was expelled from the Writers' Union and forced to refuse the prize. And in a second letter to Stockholm, he wrote: “Because of the significance that the award awarded to me has received in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it. Do not take my voluntary refusal as an insult.
Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize was awarded to his son 31 years later. In 1989, the indispensable secretary of the Academy, Professor Store Allen, read both telegrams sent by Pasternak on October 23 and 29, 1958, and said that the Swedish Academy recognized Pasternak's refusal of the prize as forced and, after thirty-one years, is presenting his medal to his son, regretting that the winner is no longer alive.
1965, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov
Mikhail Sholokhov was the only Soviet writer who received the Nobel Prize with the consent of the USSR leadership. Back in 1958, when a delegation of the Union of Writers of the USSR visited Sweden and found out that the names of Pasternak and Shokholov were among those nominated for the prize, a telegram sent to the Soviet ambassador in Sweden said: “It would be desirable, through cultural figures close to us, to give understand the Swedish public that the Soviet Union would highly appreciate the award of the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov. But then the award was given to Boris Pasternak. Sholokhov received it in 1965 - "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia." By this time, his famous "Quiet Flows the Don" had already been released.
1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Solzhenitsyn became the fourth Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1970 "for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature." By this time, such outstanding works by Solzhenitsyn as Cancer Ward and In the First Circle had already been written. Upon learning of the award, the writer stated that he intended to receive the award "in person, on the appointed day." But after the announcement of the award, the persecution of the writer at home gained full strength. The Soviet government considered the decision of the Nobel Committee "politically hostile". Therefore, the writer was afraid to go to Sweden to receive an award. He accepted it with gratitude, but did not participate in the award ceremony. Solzhenitsyn received his diploma only four years later - in 1974, when he was expelled from the USSR to the FRG.
The writer's wife, Natalya Solzhenitsyna, is still convinced that the Nobel Prize saved her husband's life and made it possible to write. She noted that if he had published The Gulag Archipelago without being a Nobel Prize winner, he would have been killed. By the way, Solzhenitsyn was the only winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who took only eight years from the first publication to the award.
1987, Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky became the fifth Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize. This happened in 1987, at the same time his large book of poems, Urania, was published. But Brodsky received the award not as a Soviet, but as an American citizen who had lived in the United States for a long time. The Nobel Prize was awarded to him "for a comprehensive work imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity." Receiving the award in his speech, Joseph Brodsky said: “For a private person who has preferred this whole life to any public role, for a person who has gone quite far in this preference - and in particular from his homeland, for it is better to be the last loser in democracy than a martyr or ruler of thoughts in despotism - to suddenly appear on this podium is a great awkwardness and test.
It should be noted that after Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize, and this event just happened during the beginning of perestroika in the USSR, his poems and essays began to be actively published at home.
1933, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
Bunin was the first Russian writer to receive such a high award - the Nobel Prize in Literature. This happened in 1933, when Bunin had been living in exile in Paris for several years. The prize was awarded to Ivan Bunin "for the strict skill with which he develops the traditions of Russian classical prose." It was about the largest work of the writer - the novel " The Life of Arseniev".
Accepting the award, Ivan Alekseevich said that he was the first exile awarded the Nobel Prize. Together with the diploma, Bunin received a check for 715 thousand French francs. With Nobel money, he could live comfortably until the end of his days. But they quickly ran out. Bunin spent them very easily, generously distributed them to needy emigrant colleagues. He invested part of it in a business that, as he was promised by "well-wishers", a win-win, and went bankrupt.
It was after receiving the Nobel Prize that Bunin's all-Russian fame grew into worldwide fame. Every Russian in Paris, even those who have not yet read a single line of this writer, took it as a personal holiday.
1958, Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
For Pasternak, this high award and recognition turned into a real persecution in his homeland.
Boris Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize more than once - from 1946 to 1950. And in October 1958 he was awarded this award. This happened just after the publication of his novel Doctor Zhivago. The prize was awarded to Pasternak "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel."
Immediately after receiving the telegram from the Swedish Academy, Pasternak replied "extremely grateful, touched and proud, amazed and embarrassed." But after it became known about the award of the prize to him, the newspapers Pravda and Literaturnaya Gazeta attacked the poet with indignant articles, awarding him with epithets, "traitor", "slanderer", "Judas". Pasternak was expelled from the Writers' Union and forced to refuse the award. And in a second letter to Stockholm, he wrote: “Because of the significance that the award awarded to me has received in the society to which I belong, I must refuse it. Do not take my voluntary refusal as an insult.
Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize was awarded to his son 31 years later. In 1989, the indispensable secretary of the Academy, Professor Store Allen, read both telegrams sent by Pasternak on October 23 and 29, 1958, and said that the Swedish Academy recognized Pasternak's refusal of the prize as forced and, after thirty-one years, is presenting his medal to his son, regretting that the winner is no longer alive.
1965, Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov
Mikhail Sholokhov was the only Soviet writer to receive the Nobel Prize with the consent of the Soviet leadership. Back in 1958, when a delegation of the Union of Writers of the USSR visited Sweden and found out that the names of Pasternak and Shokholov were among those nominated for the prize, a telegram sent to the Soviet ambassador in Sweden said: “It would be desirable, through cultural figures close to us, to give understand the Swedish public that the Soviet Union would highly appreciate the award of the Nobel Prize to Sholokhov. But then the award was given to Boris Pasternak. Sholokhov received it in 1965 - "for the artistic power and integrity of the epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia." By this time, his famous "Quiet Flows the Don" had already been released.
1970, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn
Alexander Solzhenitsyn became the fourth Russian writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1970 "for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature." By this time, such outstanding works by Solzhenitsyn as Cancer Ward and In the First Circle had already been written. Upon learning of the award, the writer stated that he intended to receive the award "in person, on the appointed day." But after the announcement of the award, the persecution of the writer at home gained full strength. The Soviet government considered the decision of the Nobel Committee "politically hostile". Therefore, the writer was afraid to go to Sweden to receive an award. He accepted it with gratitude, but did not participate in the award ceremony. Solzhenitsyn received his diploma only four years later - in 1974, when he was expelled from the USSR to the FRG.
The writer's wife, Natalya Solzhenitsyna, is still convinced that the Nobel Prize saved her husband's life and made it possible to write. She noted that if he had published The Gulag Archipelago without being a Nobel Prize winner, he would have been killed. By the way, Solzhenitsyn was the only winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who took only eight years from the first publication to the award.
1987, Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky became the fifth Russian writer to win the Nobel Prize. This happened in 1987, at the same time his large book of poems, Urania, was published. But Brodsky received the award not as a Soviet, but as an American citizen who had lived in the USA for a long time. The Nobel Prize was awarded to him "for a comprehensive work imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity." Receiving the award in his speech, Joseph Brodsky said: “For a private person who has preferred this whole life to any public role, for a person who has gone quite far in this preference - and in particular from his homeland, for it is better to be the last loser in democracy than a martyr or ruler of thoughts in despotism - to suddenly appear on this podium is a great embarrassment and test.
It should be noted that after Brodsky was awarded the Nobel Prize, and this event just happened during the beginning of perestroika in the USSR, his poems and essays began to be actively published at home.
Dedicated to the great Russian writers.
From October 21 to November 21, 2015, the Library and Information Complex invites you to an exhibition dedicated to the work of Nobel laureates in literature from Russia and the USSR.
The Nobel Prize in Literature in 2015 was awarded to a Belarusian writer. The award was given to Svetlana Aleksievich with the following wording: "For her many-voiced work - a monument to suffering and courage in our time." At the exhibition, we also presented the works of Svetlana Alexandrovna.
The exposition can be found at the address: Leningradsky Prospekt, 49, 1st floor, room 100.
The prizes established by the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel are considered the most honorable in the world. They are awarded annually (since 1901) for outstanding work in the field of medicine or physiology, physics, chemistry, for literary works, for contribution to the strengthening of peace, economics (since 1969).
The Nobel Prize in Literature is an award for literary achievement presented annually by the Nobel Committee in Stockholm on 10 December. According to the statute of the Nobel Foundation, the following persons can nominate candidates: members of the Swedish Academy, other academies, institutions and societies with similar tasks and goals; professors of the history of literature and linguistics of universities; laureates of the Nobel Prize in Literature; chairmen of authors' unions representing literary creativity in the respective countries.
Unlike the winners of other prizes (for example, in physics and chemistry), the decision to award the Nobel Prize in Literature is made by members of the Swedish Academy. The Swedish Academy brings together 18 figures from Sweden. The Academy is composed of historians, linguists, writers and one lawyer. They are known in the community as "The Eighteen". Membership in the academy is for life. After the death of one of the members, the academicians choose a new academician by secret ballot. The Academy elects from among its members the Nobel Committee. It is he who deals with the issue of awarding the prize.
Nobel laureates in literature from Russia and the USSR :
Russian laureates in literature are people with different, sometimes opposing views. I. A. Bunin and A. I. Solzhenitsyn are staunch opponents of Soviet power, and M. A. Sholokhov, on the contrary, is a communist. However, the main thing they have in common is their undoubted talent, for which they were awarded the Nobel Prizes.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a famous Russian writer and poet, an outstanding master of realistic prose, an honorary member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. In 1920 Bunin emigrated to France.
The most difficult thing for a writer in exile is to remain himself. It happens that, having left the Motherland because of the need to make dubious compromises, he is again forced to kill the spirit in order to survive. Fortunately, this fate passed Bunin. Despite any trials, Bunin always remained true to himself.
In 1922, Ivan Alekseevich's wife, Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, wrote in her diary that Romain Rolland nominated Bunin for the Nobel Prize. Since then, Ivan Alekseevich lived in hopes that someday he would be awarded this prize. 1933 All newspapers in Paris on November 10 came out with large headlines: "Bunin - Nobel laureate." Every Russian in Paris, even a loader at the Renault factory, who had never read Bunin, took this as a personal holiday. For the compatriot turned out to be the best, the most talented! In Parisian taverns and restaurants that evening there were Russians who sometimes drank for "their own" for their last pennies.
On the day of awarding the prize on November 9, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin watched "merry stupidity" - "Baby" in the "cinema". Suddenly, a narrow beam of a flashlight cut through the darkness of the hall. They were looking for Bunin. He was called by phone from Stockholm.
“And my whole old life immediately ends. I go home pretty quickly, but feeling nothing but regret that I didn’t manage to watch the film. But no. You can’t not believe it: the whole house is lit up with lights. ... Some kind of turning point in my life," recalled I. A. Bunin.
Exciting days in Sweden. In the concert hall, in the presence of the king, after the report of the writer, member of the Swedish Academy Peter Galstrem on the work of Bunin, he was presented with a folder with a Nobel diploma, a medal and a check for 715 thousand French francs.
When presenting the award, Bunin noted that the Swedish Academy acted very boldly by awarding the émigré writer. Among the contenders for this year's prize was another Russian writer, M. Gorky, however, largely due to the publication of the book "The Life of Arseniev" by that time, the scales still tipped in the direction of Ivan Alekseevich.
Returning to France, Bunin feels rich and, sparing no money, distributes "allowances" to emigrants, donates funds to support various societies. Finally, on the advice of well-wishers, he invests the remaining amount in a "win-win business" and is left with nothing.
Bunin's friend, poetess and prose writer Zinaida Shakhovskaya, in her memoir book "Reflection", noted: "With skill and a small amount of practicality, the prize should have been enough to the end. But the Bunins did not buy either an apartment or a villa ..."
Unlike M. Gorky, A. I. Kuprin, A. N. Tolstoy, Ivan Alekseevich did not return to Russia, despite the exhortations of the Moscow "messengers". He never came to his homeland, even as a tourist.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (1890-1960) was born in Moscow in the family of the famous artist Leonid Osipovich Pasternak. Mother, Rosalia Isidorovna, was a talented pianist. Maybe that's why in childhood the future poet dreamed of becoming a composer and even studied music with Alexander Nikolaevich Scriabin. However, the love of poetry won. Glory to B. L. Pasternak was brought by his poetry, and bitter trials - "Doctor Zhivago", a novel about the fate of the Russian intelligentsia.
The editors of the literary magazine, to which Pasternak offered the manuscript, considered the work anti-Soviet and refused to publish it. Then the writer sent the novel abroad, to Italy, where in 1957 it was published. The very fact of publication in the West was sharply condemned by Soviet colleagues in the creative workshop, and Pasternak was expelled from the Writers' Union. However, it was Doctor Zhivago that made Boris Pasternak a Nobel laureate. The writer was nominated for the Nobel Prize starting in 1946, but was awarded it only in 1958, after the release of the novel. The conclusion of the Nobel Committee says: "... for significant achievements both in modern lyric poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition."
In his homeland, the award of such an honorary prize to an "anti-Soviet novel" aroused the indignation of the authorities, and under the threat of expulsion from the country, the writer was forced to refuse the award. Only 30 years later, his son, Yevgeny Borisovich Pasternak, received a diploma and a Nobel laureate medal for his father.
The fate of another Nobel laureate, Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, is no less dramatic. He was born in 1918 in Kislovodsk, and his childhood and youth were spent in Novocherkassk and Rostov-on-Don. After graduating from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Rostov University, A. I. Solzhenitsyn taught and at the same time studied in absentia at the Literary Institute in Moscow. When the Great Patriotic War began, the future writer went to the front.
Shortly before the end of the war, Solzhenitsyn was arrested. The reason for the arrest was the critical remarks about Stalin found by military censorship in Solzhenitsyn's letters. He was released after Stalin's death (1953). In 1962, the Novy Mir magazine published the first story, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which tells about the life of prisoners in the camp. Literary magazines refused to print most of the subsequent works. There was only one explanation: anti-Soviet orientation. However, the writer did not back down and sent the manuscripts abroad, where they were published. Alexander Isaevich was not limited to literary activity - he fought for the freedom of political prisoners in the USSR, spoke out with sharp criticism of the Soviet system.
The literary works and political position of AI Solzhenitsyn were well known abroad, and in 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize. The writer did not go to Stockholm for the award ceremony: he was not allowed to leave the country. Representatives of the Nobel Committee, who wanted to present the prize to the laureate at home, were not allowed into the USSR.
In 1974 A. I. Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the country. He first lived in Switzerland, then moved to the United States, where he was, with a considerable delay, awarded the Nobel Prize. In the West, such works as "In the First Circle", "The Gulag Archipelago", "August 1914", "The Cancer Ward" were printed. In 1994, A. Solzhenitsyn returned to his homeland, having traveled through all of Russia, from Vladivostok to Moscow.
The fate of Mikhail Alexandrovich Sholokhov, the only one of the Russian Nobel Prize winners in literature, who was supported by government agencies, turned out differently. M. A. Sholokhov (1905-1980) was born in the south of Russia, on the Don - in the center of the Russian Cossacks. He later described his small homeland - the farm Kruzhilin of the village of Vyoshenskaya - in many works. Sholokhov graduated from only four classes of the gymnasium. He actively participated in the events of the civil war, led the food detachment, which selected the so-called surplus grain from wealthy Cossacks.
Already in his youth, the future writer felt a penchant for literary creativity. In 1922, Sholokhov arrived in Moscow, and in 1923 he began to publish his first stories in newspapers and magazines. In 1926, the collections "Don Stories" and "Azure Steppe" were published. Work on "Quiet Don" - a novel about the life of the Don Cossacks in the era of the Great Break (World War I, revolutions and civil war) - began in 1925. In 1928, the first part of the novel was published, and Sholokhov finished it in the 30s . "Quiet Don" became the pinnacle of the writer's work, and in 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize "for the artistic strength and completeness with which he depicted a historical phase in the life of the Russian people in his epic work about the Don." "Quiet Flows the Don" has been translated into several dozen languages in 45 countries.
By the time of receiving the Nobel Prize in the bibliography of Joseph Brodsky, there were six collections of poems, the poem "Gorbunov and Gorchakov", the play "Marble", many essays (written mainly in English). However, in the USSR, from where the poet was expelled in 1972, his works were distributed mainly in samizdat, and he received the award, already being a citizen of the United States of America.
For him, the spiritual connection with the homeland was important. As a relic, he kept the tie of Boris Pasternak, he even wanted to wear it to the Nobel Prize, but the rules of the protocol did not allow it. Nevertheless, Brodsky still came with Pasternak's tie in his pocket. After perestroika, Brodsky was repeatedly invited to Russia, but he never came to his homeland, which rejected him. "You can't step into the same river twice, even if it's the Neva," he said.
From Brodsky's Nobel lecture: “A person with taste, in particular literary, is less susceptible to repetition and rhythmic incantations, characteristic of any form of political demagoguery. It's not so much that virtue is no guarantee of a masterpiece, but that evil, especially political evil, is always a bad stylist. The richer the aesthetic experience of the individual, the firmer his taste, the clearer his moral choice, the freer he is - although perhaps not happier. It is in this rather applied than Platonic sense that Dostoyevsky's remark that "beauty will save the world" or Matthew Arnold's saying that "poetry will save us" should be understood. The world will probably not be saved, but an individual person can always be saved.
