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 A.M.GORKY INSTITUTE OF WORLD LITERATURE
OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

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ISSN 2619-0311 (Print)
ISSN 2712-8512 (Online)

How Mikhail Bakhtin Didn't Receive the USSR State Prize in 1971 for His Books about Dostoevsky and Rabelais

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  • Author: Petr A. Druzhinin
  • Information about the author:

    DSc in Philology, PhD in History, Leading Research Fellow, V.V. Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Volkonka St., 18/2, 119019 Moscow, Russia.

    https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3097-3375

    E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
  • For citation:

    Druzhinin, P.A. "How Mikhail Bakhtin Didn't Receive the USSR State Prize in 1971 for His Books about Dostoevsky and Rabelais." Dostoevsky and World Culture. Philological journal, no. 2 (34), 2026, pp. 348-378. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2619-0311-2026-2-348-378
  • Received: 21 March 2026
  • Approved after reviewing: 26 Apr. 2026
  • Published: 25 June 2026
  • Issue: 2026 no. 2 (34)
  • Department: ARCHIVE
  • Pages: 348–378
  • DOI: Visit Website
  • EDN:

    https://elibrary.ru/STCPKK
  • UDK: 821.161.1.0
  • BBK: 83.3(2Рос=Рус)
  • Publication Type: Research Article
  • Keywords: Rabelais, Dostoevsky, Bakhtin, Fridlender, Reizov, USSR State Prize
  • Abstract: The article publishes previously unknown documents from the archival file of the Committee for Lenin and State Prizes of the USSR under the Council of Ministers of the USSR concerning the nomination of two books by Mikhail Bakhtin-the most prominent Russian philologist and thinker of the twentieth century-for the 1971 USSR State Prize: Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics and Rabelais and His World: The Creative Work of François Rabelais and the Folk Culture of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The question of Bakhtin's nominations for the State Prize has been discussed in the scholarly literature, but only with regard to the unsuccessful attempt by Mordovia University to nominate M.M. Bakhtin for the 1967 prize. Furthermore, while the nomination of his books for the 1971 prize was known from the testimony of G.M. Fridlender and from a review by G.M. Fridlender published in 2024, no details of the competition procedure had previously come to light. The corpus of archival documents published in this article consists of nomination forms, annotations, Bakhtin's personal statement of consent to the nomination, and two reviews submitted at the Committee's request by prominent literary scholars, on the basis of which the decision to reject the nomination was made. Alongside the entirely positive review by G.M. Fridlender, which acknowledged Bakhtin's scholarly contributions, the decisive role in the Committee's decision was played by an extensive critical review by Professor B.G. Reizov-one of the foremost literary scholars of the mid-twentieth century, who largely determined the official position in the field of Western European literary studies and was at the same time a specialist in the work of F.M. Dostoevsky.

References


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