Andrei Bely Prize

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (December 2018) Click [show] for important translation instructions. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Премия Андрея Белого]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Премия Андрея Белого}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (March 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Andrei Bely Prize (Russian: Премия Андрея Белого, romanized: Premiya Andreya Belovo) is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. It was established in 1978 by the staff of Hours, the largest samizdat literary journal in Leningrad, to recognize excellence in three categories: prose, poetry, and theory. Among its founders were Boris Ivanov [ru], Boris Ostanin, Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, and other eminent figures of uncensored literature. The prize was named for Andrei Bely, whose influence spanned Russian poetry, prose, and humanitarianism.

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. Recent laureates have included Mikhail Gasparov, Vladimir Toporov, Margarita Meklina, Mikhail Gronas, Shamshad Abdullaev, Vladimir Sorokin, Victor Pelevin, Boris Dubin, Sergei Kruglov, Aleksandr Lavrov, Elena Fanailova and Aleksandra Petrova.

Boris Ostanin died on 22 September 2023, at the age of 76.^[1]