Russian Booker Prize

The Russian Booker Prize (Russian: Русский Букер, Russian Booker) is a Russian literary award modelled after the Booker Prize. It was inaugurated by English Chief Executive Sir Michael Caine in 1992. The country's premier literary prize, it is awarded to the best work of fiction written in the Russian language each year as decided by a panel of judges, irrespective of the writer's citizenship. As of 2012, the head of the Russian Booker Prize Committee is the British journalist George Walden. It is the first Russian non-governmental literary prize since the Russian Revolution in 1917.

Each year, the jury chooses the six best novels (the short list) from the nominees (the "long list"). Initially, the winner received £10,000, roughly 500 rubles and US$16,000. This has since increased to a sum of 600,000 rubles in 2011, roughly US$20,000, while each of the shortlisted finalists earns US$2,000. The criteria for inclusion is literary effort, representativeness of the contemporary literary genres and the author's reputation. Length is not a criterion, as books with between 40 and 60 pages have been nominated. In 1997 the award was renamed Smirnoff–Booker, in honor of entrepreneur, "Russia's King of Vodka", and founder of Smirnoff, Pyotr Smirnov. From 2002 to 2005, Open Russia NGO was the general sponsor of the Booker Literary Prize in Russia, leading to its name change to the Booker–Open Russia Literary Prize during that time. Before the announcement of the 2005 winner, the Booker Foundation decided to end its partnership with Open Russia after the foundation's chairman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was sentenced to nine years in prison for tax evasion. In 2005 the committee signed a five-year contract with sponsor BP. In 2010 the prize ran into funding problems and preparations for the 2010 prize were suspended because no new sponsor could be found. Since 2011 the new sponsor is Russian Telecom Equipment Company (RTEC).

In 2011, a "novel of the decade" was chosen due to lack of sponsorship to hold the normal award. Five finalists out of sixty nominees were chosen from the prize's past winners and finalists from 2001 to 2010. The five finalists were Alexander Chudakov's A Gloom Descends Upon the Ancient Steps, Oleg Pavlov's Funeral Rites in Karaganda, or, a Tale of Recent Times, Zakhar Prilepin's Sankya, Lyudmila Ulitskaya's Daniel Stein, Interpreter and Roman Senchin's The Eltyshevs. Chudakov won posthumously with A Gloom Descends Upon the Ancient Steps, which takes place in a fictional town in Kazakhstan and describes life under Stalinist Russia.