Uploaded May 2018 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
The Andrei Bely Prize (Russian: Премия Андрея Белого; Premiya Andreya Belovo) is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. Materially, the prize consisted of an apple, a single ruble, and a bottle of vodka. Despite its playful character, the prize quickly became a major phenomenon of Russian literary life, and was awarded to a number of significant writers, including novelists Andrei Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, and Yevgeny Kharitonov, poets Gennady Aygi, Olga Sedakova, and Elena Schwarz, philosopher Boris Groys, critic Mikhail Epstein, and Sinologist Vladimir Malyavin. After a lull in the early 1990s, it was revived in 1997 with the addition of a fourth category, "services to literature", and continues to be awarded to this day.
The Andrei Bely Prize (Russian: Премия Андрея Белого; Premiya Andreya Belovo) is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. Materially, the prize consisted of an apple, a single ruble, and a bottle of vodka. Despite its playful character, the prize quickly became a major phenomenon of Russian literary life, and was awarded to a number of significant writers, including novelists Andrei Bitov, Sasha Sokolov, and Yevgeny Kharitonov, poets Gennady Aygi, Olga Sedakova, and Elena Schwarz, philosopher Boris Groys, critic Mikhail Epstein, and Sinologist Vladimir Malyavin. After a lull in the early 1990s, it was revived in 1997 with the addition of a fourth category, "services to literature", and continues to be awarded to this day.
