Five Russian writers who became Nobel laureates

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On December 10, 1933, King Gustav V of Sweden presented the Nobel Prize in Literature to the writer Ivan Bunin, who became the first Russian writer to receive this high award. In total, 21 people from Russia and the USSR received the prize, established by the inventor of dynamite Alfred Bernhard Nobel in 1833, five of them in the field of literature. True, historically, the Nobel Prize was fraught with great problems for Russian poets and writers.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin handed out the Nobel Prize to friends

In December 1933, the Paris press wrote: "", "". The Russian emigration applauded. In Russia, however, the news that a Russian emigrant had received the Nobel Prize was reacted very caustically. After all, Bunin negatively perceived the events of 1917 and emigrated to France. Ivan Alekseevich himself was very upset by emigration, was actively interested in the fate of his abandoned homeland and during the Second World War categorically refused all contacts with the Nazis, having moved to the Alpes-Maritimes in 1939, returned from there to Paris only in 1945.

It is known that Nobel laureates have the right to decide for themselves how to spend the money they receive. Someone invests in the development of science, someone in charity, someone in their own business. Bunin, a creative person and devoid of "practical ingenuity," disposed of his prize, which amounted to 170,331 crowns, was completely irrational. Poet and literary critic Zinaida Shakhovskaya recalled: "".

Ivan Bunin is the first emigrant writer to be published in Russia. True, the first publications of his stories appeared already in the 1950s, after the death of the writer. Some of his novels and poems were published in his homeland only in the 1990s.

Boris Pasternak refused the Nobel Prize

Boris Pasternak was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature "for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for the continuation of the traditions of the great Russian epic novel" annually from 1946 to 1950. In 1958, he was again nominated by last year's Nobel laureate Albert Camus, and on October 23, Pasternak became the second Russian writer to be awarded this prize.

The writers 'environment in the poet's homeland took this news extremely negatively and on October 27 Pasternak was unanimously expelled from the USSR Writers' Union, at the same time submitting a petition to deprive Pasternak of Soviet citizenship. In the USSR, the receipt of the Pasternak prize was associated only with his novel Doctor Zhivago. The literary newspaper wrote:.

The massive campaign launched against Pasternak forced him to refuse the Nobel Prize. The poet sent a telegram to the Swedish Academy, in which he wrote: "".

It is worth noting that in the USSR until 1989, even in the school curriculum for literature, there was no mention of Pasternak's work. The first director Eldar Ryazanov decided to introduce the Soviet people to the creative work of Pasternak. In his comedy "The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!" (1976) he included the poem "No one will be in the house", transforming it into an urban romance, performed by the bard Sergei Nikitin. Later Ryazanov included in his film "Office Romance" an excerpt from yet another poem by Pasternak - "To love others is a heavy cross …" (1931). True, it sounded in a farcical context. But it is worth noting that at that time the very mention of Pasternak's poems was a very bold step.

Mikhail Sholokhov, receiving the Nobel Prize, did not bow to the monarch

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Sholokhov received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965 for his novel Quiet Flows the Don and went down in history as the only Soviet writer to receive this prize with the consent of the Soviet leadership. The laureate's diploma says "in recognition of the artistic strength and honesty that he showed in his Don epic about the historical phases of the life of the Russian people."

Gustav Adolph VI, who presented the prize to the Soviet writer, called him "one of the most outstanding writers of our time." Sholokhov did not bow to the king, as the rules of etiquette prescribed. Some sources claim that he did it on purpose with the words:

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was deprived of Soviet citizenship because of the Nobel Prize

Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn, the commander of a sound reconnaissance battery, who rose to the rank of captain during the war years and was awarded two military orders, in 1945 was arrested by front-line counterintelligence for anti-Sovietism. The verdict is 8 years in the camps and life in exile. He went through a camp in New Jerusalem near Moscow, the Marfinskaya "sharashka" and the Special Ekibastuz camp in Kazakhstan. In 1956, Solzhenitsyn was rehabilitated, and since 1964, Alexander Solzhenitsyn devoted himself to literature. At the same time he worked on 4 major works at once: "The Gulag Archipelago", "Cancer Ward", "The Red Wheel" and "The First Circle". In the USSR in 1964 the story "One Day in Ivan Denisovich" was published, and in 1966 the story "Zakhar-Kalita" was published.

On October 8, 1970, Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize "for moral strength, gleaned in the tradition of the great Russian literature." This was the reason for the persecution of Solzhenitsin in the USSR. In 1971, all the writer's manuscripts were confiscated, and in the next 2 years all his publications were destroyed. In 1974, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was issued, according to which for the systematic commission of actions incompatible with belonging to the citizenship of the USSR and damaging the USSR ", Alexander Solzhenitsin was deprived of Soviet citizenship and deported from the USSR.

They returned the citizenship to the writer only in 1990, and in 1994 he returned to Russia with his family and became actively involved in public life.

Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky in Russia was convicted of parasitism

Joseph Alexandrovich Brodsky began to write poetry at the age of 16. Anna Akhmatova predicted a hard life for him and a glorious creative destiny. In 1964, in Leningrad, a criminal case was opened against the poet on charges of parasitism. He was arrested and sent into exile in the Arkhangelsk region, where he spent a year.

In 1972, Brodsky turned to Secretary General Brezhnev with a request to work in his homeland as an interpreter, but his request remained unanswered, and he was forced to emigrate. Brodsky first lives in Vienna, London, and then moves to the United States, where he becomes a professor at New York, Michigan and other universities in the country.

December 10, 1987 Joseph Brosky was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for an all-encompassing creativity, imbued with clarity of thought and passion of poetry." It should be said that Brodsky, after Vladimir Nabokov, is the second Russian writer who writes in English as in his native language.

Interesting factSuch famous personalities as Mahatma Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt, Nicholas Roerich and Leo Tolstoy were nominated for the Nobel Prize at different times, but never received it.

Literature lovers will certainly be interested in El libro que no puede esperar - a book that is written in disappearing ink.