The annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda, writes Valdai Club Programme Director Oleg Barabanov.
The conclusion of Nobel week gave the world new laureates of the prestigious international prize. This time, they included Soviet-born chemistry prize winner Alexey Ekimov. Unlike in the two previous years, there have been no high-profile award winners who could influence the political agenda in Russia. Against this rather calm background, it is not without interest to recall previous Russian laureates and, in general, the ups and downs of the perception of the Nobel Prize in the USSR and Russia.
During the pre-Soviet, imperial period of the development of Russian science, Ivan Pavlov won the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1904 for his work on the physiology of digestion, which expanded and changed the understanding of vital aspects of this issue. In 1908, Ilya Mechnikov won the prize in physiology and medicine for his work on immunity. The Nobel Prize in literature in 1905 was awarded to the Pole Henryk Sienkiewicz, then a citizen of the Russian Empire, for his epic novels. At the same time, according to the declassified archives of the Nobel Committee, candidates who ultimately didn’t win the prize during the pre-revolutionary period included Leo Tolstoy, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, lawyers Fyodor Martens and Ivan Bliokh, historian Maxim Kovalevsky, minister Sergei Witte, and even Emperor Nicholas II himself.
During the period between the world wars, Ivan Bunin received the Nobel Prize in literature as a Russian emigré in 1933, for the rigorous skill with which he developed the traditions of classical Russian prose. Among the Russian emigrants who did not receive the prize in literature, Maxim Gorky (who lived in exile during the early Soviet period), Konstantin Balmont, Ivan Shmelev, Mark Aldanov, Nikolai Berdyaev, Boris Zaitsev, again Dmitry Merezhkovsky and even General Pyotr Krasnov were nominated. In 1929, 1933 and 1935 Nicholas Roerich was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1971, Simon Kuznets became another emigrant to receive the Nobel Prize in Economics for his empirically based interpretation of economic growth; in 1973 the prize in economics was awarded to Wassily Leontief for the development of the input-output method and for its application to economic problems; and in 1977, Ilya Prigogine won the prize in chemistry for his work on the thermodynamics of irreversible processes, especially for the theory of dissipative structures.
The history of awarding Nobel Prizes to Soviet citizens is very controversial. On the one hand, the awards for scientific endeavours were perceived positively in the Soviet Union from an official point of view, as proof of the world class level of Soviet science and its achievements. The first Soviet scientist to receive the Nobel Prize in chemistry was Nikolai Semenov in 1956, director of the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, for research in the field of the mechanism of chemical reactions. In 1958, the Nobel Prize in physics was shared by Igor Tamm, Ilya Frank and Pavel Cherenkov for the discovery and interpretation of Cherenkov radiation. In 1962, Lev Landau received the prize in physics for his innovative theories of condensed matter, especially liquid helium. In 1964, the same prize was shared by Nikolai Basov and Alexander Prokhorov for their fundamental work in the field of quantum electronics, which led to the creation of oscillators and amplifiers based on the laser-maser principle. In 1975, Leonid Kantorovich became one of the laureates of the prize in economics for his contribution to the theory of optimal resource allocation. In 1978, among the laureates of the physics prize was Pyotr Kapitsa for his fundamental inventions and discoveries in the field of low temperature physics.
In this regard, it is significant that the bulk of scientific prizes for Soviet citizens occurred in the late 1950s, during the first half of the 1960s, or were associated with work performed during the period when the prize was awarded later in time. To a certain extent, this reflects the real chronology of the international successes of Soviet science, which, as it turns out, happened precisely in the second half of the 1950s and in the early 1960s, as it was at the peak of its achievements. In part, this rise was a kind of side effect of the implementation of the Soviet nuclear programme (several of the Nobel laureates were directly involved in it). At the time, in addition to nuclear physics, priority government attention was paid to related branches of science. As the tasks of nuclear policy were fulfilled, it turned out that other branches of physics and chemistry went into a “quiet” “stand-by” mode and no longer delivered such high creative breakthroughs worthy of a Nobel Prize. The notorious “stagnation” in the Soviet state and society during the Brezhnev era was thus accompanied by stagnation in science, despite all the opposition of the academic environment and the fact that government support and funding did not weaken at all during this period.
As a result, Soviet scientists were subsequently unable to create anything similar to the “Khrushchev takeoff,” at least from the point of view of the Nobel committee. However, sometimes here in the domestic literature on the history of science, one can find complaints that scientific Nobel prizes also, they say, became the object of politicisation during the late stage of the Cold War. That is why the achievements of Soviet scientists (who were actually great) did not receive Nobel recognition. Time will judge whether this is true or not. But in any case, you will hardly find the names of Soviet scientists whose creative heyday occurred in the 1970s or 1980s on the various lists of those who did not receive the Nobel Prize, but were quite worthy of it.
After a fairly long break, Nobel Prizes in scientific fields again began to be awarded to Russian citizens and emigrants from the USSR in the early 2000s. Some of them were awarded to older scientists for their achievements during the Soviet period, which originated in the same “takeoff” of Soviet physics in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 2000, Zhores Alferov became one of the Nobel Prize laureates in physics for the development of the semiconductor heterostructures used in high-frequency circuits and optoelectronics. In 2003, the prize in physics was received by Vitaly Ginzburg and Alexei Abrikosov, who had already left for the USA by that time, for their pioneering contribution to the theory of superconductors and superfluid liquids. It is noteworthy here that Abrikosov, against the backdrop of the awarding of the prize, persistently emphasized that he was not a Russian, but an American physicist. Apparently, the issues of changing identity and denying both post-Soviet realities and his own Soviet school were of key importance for him.
A truly new stage in the awarding of Nobel prizes in scientific fields began only in the early 2010s. It was associated with modern discoveries, and not with recognition of the merits of the past from the Soviet era. There are very few Russian names here, to put it mildly. Characteristically, they are all associated with emigrants from Russia who have achieved their scientific results abroad. These are the winners of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for their innovative experiments on the study of the two-dimensional material graphene, as well as one of the laureates of the 2023 Chemistry Prize, Alexey Ekimov, for the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots. In fairness, it should be noted that the current award to Ekimov is an assessment of his achievements both during the Soviet period and after his subsequent departure to the USA. To a certain extent, this award can also be classified as one which was granted for historical achievements in the past.
In any case, the names of the new generation of scientists working in the Russian Federation itself are not among the Nobel laureates. Each reader can decide for himself whether politicisation is to blame for this, or the reasons must be sought in the internal problems of our state and society, both in the bureaucratisation of science and in academic clannishness, which does not allow many promising young scientists to develop.
This is the situation with scientific prizes. A completely different situation has developed with the perception of the Nobel Peace and Literature Prizes in the USSR and Russia. Here, the issues of subjectivity and politicisation were raised especially often. However, here, too, a very clear boundary can be traced. When these prizes were awarded to people who, at the time of their presentation, were in favour with the system or even at the pinnacle of power (Sholokhov, Gorbachev), there were no problems with these Nobel prizes. When the prize was awarded to someone else, then the question of politicisation was raised. Sometimes this was accompanied by a loud and scandalous domestic campaign (Pasternak) or was essentially surrounded by a veil of official silence within the country (Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, Memorial ), or accompanied by sarcasm in the style of “Thank you for not choosing Navalny **” (Muratov ). Thus, the “friend or foe” marker has worked very clearly here.
The archives of the Nobel Committee, declassified over time, contain many interesting details about the Soviet nominees. Thus, Joseph Stalin and Maxim Litvinov, among others, were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945, and in 1946 and 1947 Alexandra Kollontai, in 1948 again Joseph Stalin and Vyacheslav Molotov. But none of them managed to get it. As a result, in 1949 the USSR decided to create its own international award: the Stalin Prize “For Strengthening Peace Between Nations,” which in 1956 was renamed the Lenin Prize. This prize was partly positioned as a Soviet alternative to the Nobel Peace Prize. Every year, several people from among the fighters for peace and against imperialism in the Soviet sense became its laureates.
As for the Nobel Peace Prize, among Soviet citizens it was received by Andrei Sakharov in 1975, for his fearless support of the fundamental principles of peace between people and his courageous struggle against the abuse of power and any form of suppression of human dignity. In 1990 it was awarded to Mikhail Gorbachev, in recognition of his leading role in the peace process, which played an important part of the life of the international community.
Looking through the list of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, it can be noted that it was its presentation to Andrei Sakharov in 1975 that became the first example of a dissident from a non-Western country winning. This award became a kind of precedent for further awards to oppositionists and human rights activists from non-Western countries in the future. In recent post-Soviet history, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Dmitry Muratov in 2021 and Memorial in 2022. It should be noted here that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to laureates from the same country for two years in a row, an extreme rarity in recent decades.
As for the literature prize, among Soviet citizens in the 1930s, Maxim Gorky continued to be nominated for it after his return from emigration to the USSR, but without success. Boris Pasternak was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1946, followed by nominations in 1947-50 and 1957. Mikhail Sholokhov, in turn, was first nominated in 1948, and then in 1949-50, 1955-56, 1958 and 1961-64. In 1949 and 1950, Leonid Leonov was nominated. In 1963 — Evgeny Yevtushenko, in 1965-66 — Anna Akhmatova, in 1965-68 — Konstantin Paustovsky, in 1968 Konstantin Fedin, as well as Ukrainian writers Pavlo Tychyna (1967), Ivan Drach (1967 and 1969), Lina Kostenko (1967) and Nikolai Bazhan (1971), and in 1968-70 Friedebert Tuglas from Estonia. As a result, Boris Pasternak received the Nobel Prize in 1958 — for significant achievements in modern lyric poetry, as well as for continuing the traditions of the great Russian epic novel. Pasternak refused the prize under pressure. In 1965, the prize was awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov for the artistic strength and integrity of his epic about the Don Cossacks at a turning point for Russia. Alexander Solzhenitsyn was first nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1969 and received it the following year — in 1970 — for the moral strength with which he followed the immutable traditions of Russian literature. In 1987, Joseph Brodsky became a Nobel laureate for his comprehensive creativity, imbued with clarity of thought and passion of poetry.
In general, the annual Nobel Prize award ceremony attracts the wider attention of world public opinion to science and literature for a week. Every time the chances are discussed, and bets are even placed with bookmakers. Then everything calms down — until the next year. For Russia, both within officialdom and outside it, this is sometimes accompanied by nervous anticipation of who will be elected this time and how it will affect the domestic political agenda. Due to the aforementioned reasons, there is little hope to expect awards to scientists working in the Russian Federation itself, and for the Peace Prize, the “Russian quota” has been met for the time being, unless some kind of “black swan” happens again. This only leaves the Literature Prize. We’ll keep an eye on it next year.
