Soviet Nobel Prize Winner in Literature

1. Ivan Bunin (won in 1933)

Ivan Bunin was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. He defeated a strong rival, Maxim Gorky, a proletarian writer favored by Stalin. During the Tsarist era, the Nobel family lived in Russia for many years. By 1916, one-third of Russia's crude oil was in the hands of this family. However, the Bolshevik October Revolution forced Alfred Nobel's nephew Emmanuel Nobel to flee Russia, causing his family to lose their entire business empire.

When Emanuel settled in Paris in the late 20th century, he had close relations with anti-Soviet Russian immigrants, including Ivan Bunin. Although officials said they could not influence the Nobel Prize selection committee's decision, his sympathy was obvious. Bunin won the award because "he inherited the rigorous skills of the Russian classical tradition in prose writing." The Swedish Academy clarified that Bunin was chosen "to compensate for our failure to honor Chekhov and Tolstoy." Soviet media said the award was politically motivated because it was awarded to "enemies of the revolution." So this award was condemned in the Soviet Union for decades.

2. Boris Pasternak (winner in 1958)

Boris Pasternak "for his contribution to contemporary lyric poetry and the great Russian "An important achievement in the epic tradition". His book "Doctor Zhivago" had just been released to the world on the eve of the award, and was published in Italy for the first time after it was banned in the Soviet Union. State media and officials launched a harassment campaign against Pasternak.

Because he published novels abroad and won the Nobel Prize, he was called a traitor to the motherland. He was considered a traitor and anti-Soviet. Pasternak was forced to give up the prize and became persona non grata in the Soviet Union. At a conference of communist writers, there was this sentence: "I have not read Pasternak's works, but I condemn him." These words became a motto, symbolizing the stupidity of Soviet censorship.

3. Mikhail Sholokhov (1965)

Sholokhov is the author of the epic novel "Quiet Don", which tells the story of The story of the Russian Cossacks during the October Revolution and Civil War. The novel is often called "War and Peace in the 20th Century." However, the book has also faced much controversy, with conspiracy theories suggesting that Sholokhov was not the real author because his other works did not show the same literary skill and talent. Nonetheless, the committee declared him the winner. "Thanks to the power and integrity of his art, the author expressed in the epic novel "Quiet on the Don" the historical stage of the life of the Russian people."

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