Leo Tolstoy and the Nobel Prize. Beliefs and money. Why did Leo Tolstoy refuse the Nobel Prize? Leo Tolstoy Nobel Prize 1906

On October 8, 1906, Leo Tolstoy refused the Nobel Prize. It's actually not that surprising. After all, Leo Tolstoy was a man of principles. He had a negative attitude towards various monetary rewards. Throughout the history of the Nobel Prize, great people have refused it more than once, but more often they were forced to refuse than they refused because of their convictions. Today we decided to talk about seven laureates who refused the Nobel Prize.

The Nobel Prize is one of the most prestigious international prizes, awarded annually for outstanding scientific research, revolutionary inventions or major contributions to culture or society. Many people have long considered it a great honor to receive such an award, but not everyone.

Leo Tolstoy

The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, having learned that Russian Academy Sciences nominated him as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he fervently asked in a letter to his friend the Finnish writer and translator Arvid Järnefelt to ensure that the prize was not awarded to him. The fact is that Leo Tolstoy himself was categorically convinced that the Nobel Prize is, first of all, money. And he considered money a great evil.

Jean-Paul Sartre

Not only Leo Tolstoy voluntarily refused the Nobel Prize. Writer Jean-Paul Sartre, winner in 1964, also refused the award due to his beliefs. To all the questions that were put to him on this subject, he answered quite clearly that in the current situation the Nobel Prize is in fact an award intended for writers of the West or "rebels" from the East. Sartre believed that only certain types of writers receive the prize; those talented and prize-worthy writers who do not fit the category will never receive the prize.

Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak in his life became a worthy winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1958. However, Pasternak was forced to refuse the award under intense pressure from the Soviet authorities. The prize was awarded to Pasternak “for outstanding achievements in modern lyric poetry and in the field of great Russian prose.” But the Soviet authorities did not allow Pasternak to receive the prize because of his novel Doctor Zhivago, which was published abroad. The USSR considered the novel “ideologically harmful.”

Richard Kuhn

In 1937, Adolf Hitler banned German citizens from receiving Nobel Prizes because he was offended that the Swedish committee's award had been given to Nazi critic Carl von Ossietzky. Richard Kuhn, winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1938, was due to receive this award for his work on carotenoids and vitamins, but was eventually forced to refuse the prize due to Hitler's fundamental ban on German citizens receiving Nobel Prizes.

Adolf Butenandt

Another German chemist, who was a Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry together with the Swiss scientist L. Ruzicka, was forced to refuse it in the same way as Richard Kuhn due to Hitler's ban on German citizens receiving the Nobel Prize. However, it is known that Butenandt’s research on the biochemistry of hormonal substances in insects was awarded a prize to them. P. Ehrlich.

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From the history of the greats scientific discoveries: Adolf Friedrich Johann Butenandt

Gerhard Domagk

Gerhard Domagk was an outstanding German pathologist and bacteriologist. He won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1939 “for his discovery of the antibacterial effect of prontosil.” He became the third person on the list who was forced to refuse the award due to the ban of Adolf Hitler.

110 years ago, on October 8, 1906, the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy refused the Nobel Prize.

Having learned that the Russian Academy of Sciences nominated him as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1906, Leo Tolstoy sent a letter to the Finnish writer and translator Arvid Järnefelt.

In it, Tolstoy asked his acquaintance through his Swedish colleagues to “try to make sure that I am not awarded this prize,” because “if this happened, it would be very unpleasant for me to refuse.” With this, the Russian writer greatly surprised Järnefelt, as, in fact, many other citizens different countries and peoples. This has never happened before. The Nobel Prize, young at that time (established according to the will of Alfred Nobel in 1897, was awarded to writers for the first time in 1901) was considered prestigious. Its monetary equivalent was then 150 million Swedish crowns.

Järnefelt fulfilled this delicate assignment, and the prize was awarded to the Italian poet Giosué Carducci, whose name is known today only to Italian literary scholars.

Tolstoy was already 78 years old at that time. He could go down in the history of the Nobel Prize as one of its oldest laureates. Tolstoy was pleased that the prize was not awarded to him. “Firstly,” he wrote, “it saved me from a great difficulty in disposing of this money, which, like all money, in my conviction, can only bring evil; and secondly, it gave me the honor and great pleasure to receive expressions of sympathy from so many people, although unknown to me, but still deeply respected by me.”

Interestingly, the author of War and Peace set a precedent. There was even such a concept as “Nobel refuseniks.” Among them was Soviet poet and the prose writer Boris Pasternak, who refused the Nobel in 1958. True, it was forced, under pressure from the Kremlin. It is still unclear what the leaders of the USSR of those years did not like most - his novel Doctor Zhivago, which was nominated for a prize, or the fact that the novel was published “in the capitalist West.”

For political reasons, German microbiologist Gerhard Domagk refused the award in 1939. Because of Adolf Hitler. He was angry at Nobel Committee for awarding the Peace Prize in 1936 to the German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky, who publicly condemned Hitler and Nazism. In 1937, the Fuhrer issued a decree prohibiting German citizens from accepting the Nobel Prize. As a result, chemists Richard Kuhn, Adolf Butenandt and physiologist Gerhard Domagk, who became Nobel laureates in 1938 and 1939, were unable to attend the award ceremony. The medals were awarded to scientists after the end of World War II. It is interesting that in Sweden, in the Nobel Committee in 1939, there were people who actively nominated Adolf Hitler himself for the next peace prize. Hitler was then one of the most popular figures in the West (if not the most popular).

In 1964, the famous French philosopher, novelist and playwright Jean Paul Sartre refused the prize. Only, unlike Leo Tolstoy, he did not become delicate, but loudly stated why he refused the prize. Sartre named his independence as the main reason; he did not want to question it. In addition, the Frenchman did not agree with the choice of the Nobel Committee. He wrote: “...In the current climate...the prize is in fact an award intended for writers of the West or “rebels” from the East. Neruda, one of the greatest poets South America. Aragon's candidacy was never seriously discussed. It is regrettable that the Nobel Prize was awarded to Pasternak, and not Sholokhov, and that the only Soviet work, which received the prize was a book published abroad and banned in home country. The balance could be restored with a similar gesture, but with the opposite meaning.”

Sartre was right. The prize became an instrument of the West's information war against the USSR and other political opponents of the Western world (in particular, China). In 1970, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for the moral strength drawn from the tradition of great Russian literature.” The author of “The Gulag Archipelago” was a real representative of the “fifth column”, launching the myth of “tens of millions of prisoners of Stalin’s concentration camps.” It is not for nothing that he received great support in the West, after his expulsion from the USSR, and then in the “new, “democratic” Russia, after 1991.

Unfortunately, the “democratization” of the Russian language is currently ongoing. cultural space and education. Thus, the President of the Russian Academy of Education (RAE) Lyudmila Verbitskaya stated that from school curriculum it is necessary to exclude the novel by Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace”, as well as “certain works” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. She spoke about this in an interview with the Moscow agency: “For example, I am absolutely convinced that War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, as well as some novels by Fyodor Dostoevsky, should be removed from the school curriculum.”

It is obvious that all the time from the liberal “reforms” of the 1990s to the “rising from our knees” of the 2000s, there has been a real disaster in education. Russian classical education is the main barrier to the final creation in Russia of a semi-feudal, class society with a division into the “chosen” and rich (“new nobles”) and the poor and “losers.” On the path of archaization, when “War and Peace” and other works of classics that deny bourgeois and bourgeois psychology, fight for social justice, teach critical thinking, want to be replaced with the Bible, the Koran or the Torah.

Thus, we may recall that the Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, outstanding personality world-class, at the end of his life he was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church and anathematized her highest hierarchy. For raising uncomfortable questions for church hierarchs.

In essence, they want to drive Russians into the archaic in order to forever legitimize social inequality - material, cultural and educational. When in secondary schools the hours in mathematics, Russian language and literature, history, physics and chemistry are gradually reduced. And they are immediately introduced from the elementary grades English language, so that future consumer slaves know the language of the “masters”. They are increasing the “national component”, laying a “mine” under the Russian Federation. They force the “Law of God” into schools without any effort or effort. After all, this is the only way to justify social injustice and inequality (invoking his divine nature). It is clear that sooner or later this order will lead to disaster, following the example of 1917. However, the “reformers” do not understand this or believe that there will be enough for their lifetime.

MOSCOW, October 13 - RIA Novosti. The Nobel Committee on Thursday awarded the 2016 Literature Prize to Bob Dylan. Last year the prize was awarded to the Belarusian writer Svetlana Alexievich, although Haruki Murakami was considered the favorite. This year, bookmakers predicted him to win again, but the choice of the Nobel Committee is unpredictable. RIA Novosti looked at which of the writers who were certainly worthy of the prize never received it.

Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature for several years in a row - from 1902 to 1906. Although his ideas and works were popular in the world, the writer did not receive a prize. Secretary of the Swedish Academy Karl Wiersen stated that Tolstoy “condemned all forms of civilization and insisted in their place on adopting a primitive way of life, divorced from all institutions high culture". Later Tolstoy wrote a letter in which he asked not to be awarded the Nobel Prize.

Hello. If you modern man, living active social life, then you probably know what the Nobel Prize is.

Let us briefly note that NOBEL PRIZES, awarded in accordance with A. Nobel's will, drawn up on November 27, 1895, which provided for the allocation of capital for the award of prizes in five areas: physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine, literature and contribution to world peace. Did you know interesting fact that one of the most readable writers world - Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, very delicately, refused the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1906.

Having learned that the Russian Academy of Sciences had nominated him as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature for 1906, on October 8, 1906, Leo Tolstoy sent a letter to the Finnish writer and translator Arvid Järnefelt.

In it, Tolstoy asked his acquaintance through his Swedish colleagues to “try to make sure that I am not awarded this prize,” because “if this happened, it would be very unpleasant for me to refuse.” Järnefelt fulfilled this delicate assignment, and the prize was awarded to the Italian poet Giosué Carducci, whose name is known today only to Italian literary scholars.

Tolstoy was pleased that the prize was not awarded to him. “Firstly,” he wrote, “it saved me from a great difficulty in disposing of this money, which, like all money, in my conviction, can only bring evil; and secondly, it gave me the honor and great pleasure to receive expressions of sympathy from so many people, although unknown to me, but still deeply respected by me.”

Probably, from the point of view of today's pragmatism, the realities of the time, and simply the psychology of most people, Tolstoy's thoughts and actions are a complete paradox. “Money is evil,” but a lot of good deeds could be done with it; in the end, it could be distributed to the peasants and the poor. But you never know there can be explanations from our subjective positions.

Which of the great Russian writers and poets was awarded the Nobel Prize? Mikhail Sholokhov, Ivan Bunin, Boris Pasternak and Joseph Brodsky.

Joseph Brodsky, a poet practically unknown in Russia, suddenly became a laureate of the most prestigious literary prize in the world. What an amazing case!

However, why is it surprising? At first, they wanted to bury Joseph Brodsky in the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg, next to the emperors, and then, according to his will, they scattered his ashes over the canals in Naples. So the award is quite natural.

Who now remembers the name of the first Nobel Prize laureate in literature, who received it in December 1901 - the French poet Rene Francois Armand Sully-Prudhomme. He is not known, and has never really been known, even in his native France.

And there are plenty of such, to put it mildly, dubious laureates among the Nobel laureates! But at the same time, Mark Twain, Emile Zola, Ibsen, Chekhov, Oscar Wilde and, of course, Leo Tolstoy lived and worked!

When you get acquainted with the long list of writers, in different times noted by the Nobel Committee, you involuntarily catch yourself thinking that you have never heard four names out of every ten. And five of the remaining six are nothing special either. Their “star” works have long been forgotten. The thought naturally comes to mind: it turns out that the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded for some other merit? Judging by the life and work of the same Joseph Brodsky, then yes!

Already after the first dubious award, public opinion in Sweden and other countries was shocked by the decision of the Nobel Academy. A month after the scandalous award, in January 1902, Leo Tolstoy received a protest address from a group of Swedish writers and artists:

“In view of the award of the Nobel Prize for the first time, we, the undersigned writers, artists and critics of Sweden, want to express our admiration to you. We see in you not only a deeply revered patriarch modern literature, but also one of those powerful soulful poets, who in this case should be remembered first of all, although you, in your personal judgment, have never strived for this kind of reward. We feel the need to address you with this greeting all the more vividly because, in our opinion, the institution that was entrusted with the award of the literary prize does not, in its current composition, represent either the opinion of writers and artists or public opinion. Let them know abroad that even in our remote country the main and most powerful art is considered to be that which rests on freedom of thought and creativity.” This letter was signed by more than forty prominent figures of Swedish literature and art.

Everyone knew: there is only one writer in the world worthy of being the first to receive the world's highest award. And this is the writer Leo Tolstoy. In addition, it was at the turn of the century that a new brilliant creation writer - the novel “Resurrection,” which Alexander Blok would later call “a testament of the outgoing century to the new.”

On January 24, 1902, an article by the writer August Strindberg appeared in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, stating in it that the majority of members of the Academy “are unscrupulous artisans and amateurs in literature, who for some reason are called upon to administer justice, but the concepts of these gentlemen about art are so They are childishly naive that they call poetry only what is written in verse, preferably in rhyme. And if, for example, Tolstoy became forever famous as an artist human destinies, if he is the creator of historical frescoes, then he is not considered a poet by them on the grounds that he did not write poetry!”

Another judgment on this matter belongs to the famous Danish literary critic Georg Brandes: “Leo Tolstoy belongs to first place among modern writers. No one inspires such a sense of reverence as he does! We can say: no one but him inspires a feeling of reverence. When, at the first award of the Nobel Prize, it was given to a noble and subtle, but second-rate poet, all the best Swedish authors sent an address to Leo Tolstoy for their signatures, in which they protested against such an award of this distinction. It went without saying that it should have belonged to only one thing - the great writer of Russia, for whom they unanimously recognized the right to this prize.”

Numerous appeals and demands for the restoration of outraged justice forced Tolstoy himself to take up his pen: “Dear and respected brothers! I was very pleased that the Nobel Prize was not awarded to me. Firstly, it saved me from a great difficulty - managing this money, which, like any money, in my conviction, can only bring evil; and secondly, it gave me the honor and great pleasure to receive expressions of sympathy from so many people, although unfamiliar to me, but still deeply respected by me. Please accept, dear brothers, my sincere gratitude and best feelings. Leo Tolstoy."

It would seem that this could be the end of the question?! But no! The whole story received an unexpected continuation.

Having learned that the Russian Academy of Sciences nominated him as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Leo Tolstoy on October 7, 1906, in a letter to his friend, Finnish writer and translator Arvid Järnefelt, asked that the prize not be awarded to him. “If this happened, I would be very unpleasant to refuse,” wrote the author of War and Peace. Järnefelt complied with the request and the prize was awarded to the Italian poet Giosue Carducci. As a result, everyone was happy: both Carducci and Tolstoy. The latter wrote: “This saved me from great difficulty in disposing of this money, which, like all money, in my opinion, can only bring evil; and secondly, it gave me the honor and great pleasure to receive expressions of sympathy from so many people.” , although not familiar to me, but still deeply respected by me."

In 1905, Tolstoy's new work, The Great Sin, was published. This, now almost forgotten acutely nonfiction book talked about the hard lot of the Russian peasantry. Now they don’t remember it also because in this work Tolstoy spoke out in the most categorical form, reasoned and extremely convincingly against private ownership of land.

The Russian Academy of Sciences had a completely understandable idea to nominate Leo Tolstoy for the Nobel Prize. In a note compiled for this purpose by outstanding Russian scientists, academicians A.F. Koni, K.K. Arsenyev and N.P. The Kondakovs gave the highest praise to “War and Peace” and “Resurrection”. And in conclusion, on behalf of the Russian Imperial Academy of Sciences, a wish was expressed to award Tolstoy the Nobel Prize.

This note was also approved by the Class of Fine Literature of the Academy of Sciences - there was such a thing in the Academy at that time organizational structure. On January 19, 1906, along with a copy of Tolstoy’s “The Great Sin,” the note was sent to Sweden.

As soon as he heard about such a great honor, Tolstoy wrote to the Finnish writer Arvid Ernefeld: “If this happened, it would be very unpleasant for me to refuse, and therefore I very much ask you, if you have - as I think - any connections in Sweden, try to make sure that I am not awarded this prize. Maybe you know one of the members, maybe you can write to the chairman, asking him not to disclose this, so that they don’t do it. I ask you to do what you can so that they do not award me a bonus and do not put me in a very unpleasant position - to refuse it.”

In fact, the Nobel Prize only partially reflects the true merits to humanity of a particular writer, scientist or politician. Nine out of ten Nobel laureates in the field of literature were ordinary artisans from literature and did not leave any noticeable mark on it. And only about one or two out of these ten were truly brilliant.

So why then were the others given bonuses and honors?

The presence of a genius among the awarded gave the award to the rest of the very, very dubious company the illusion of authenticity and deservedness. Apparently, in this most sophisticated way, the Nobel Committee tried and is trying to influence the literary and political preferences of society, the formation of its tastes, affections and, ultimately, neither more nor less, on the worldview of all mankind, on its future.

Remember with what enthusiastic aspiration the majority says: “So-and-so is a Nobel laureate!!!” But Nobel laureates There were not only geniuses who worked for the benefit of people, but also destructive individuals.

So the money bags, through the banker's Nobel Prize, are trying to buy the very soul of the World. Apparently, the great Tolstoy understood this before anyone else - he understood, and did not want his name to be used to endorse such a terrible idea.