The International Lenin Peace Prize (Russian: международная Ленинская премия мира, mezhdunarodnaya Leninskaya premiya mira) was a Soviet Union award named in honor of Vladimir Lenin. It was awarded by a panel appointed by the Soviet government, to notable individuals whom the panel indicated had "strengthened peace among comrades". It was founded as the International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples, but was renamed the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples (Russian: Международная Ленинская премия «За укрепление мира между народами», Mezhdunarodnaya Leninskaya premiya «za ukrepleniye mira mezhdu narodami» ) as a result of destalinization. Unlike the Nobel Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize was usually awarded to several people a year rather than to just one individual. The prize was mainly awarded to prominent Communists and supporters of the Soviet Union who were not Soviet citizens. Notable recipients include: W. E. B. Du Bois, Fidel Castro, Salvador Allende, Mikis Theodorakis, Sean MacBride, Angela Davis, Pablo Picasso, Oscar Niemeyer, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Abdul Sattar Edhi and Nelson Mandela.
The prize was created as the International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples on December 21, 1949 by executive order of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in honor of Joseph Stalin's seventieth birthday (although this was after his seventy-first).
Following Nikita Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956 during the Twentieth Party Congress, the prize was renamed on September 6 as the International Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples. All previous recipients were asked to return their Stalin Prizes so they could be replaced by the renamed Lenin Prize. By a decision of Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of December 11, 1989, the prize was renamed the International Lenin Peace Prize. Two years later, after the USSR had collapsed, the Russian government, as the successor state to the defunct Soviet Union, ended the award program.
The International Lenin Prize should not be confused with the International Peace Prize, awarded by the World Peace Council. In 1941 the Soviet Union created the Stalin Prize (later renamed the USSR State Prize), which was awarded annually to accomplished Soviet writers, composers, artists and scientists.
Awarded April 6, 1951 – Seven winners
Frédéric Joliot-CurieSoong Ching-ling (Madame Sun Yat-sen)Hewlett JohnsonEugénie CottonArthur Wheelock Moulton-DeclinedPak Chong AeHeriberto Jara CoronaAwarded December 20, 1951 -Six winners
Guo MoruoMonica FeltonOyama IkuoPietro NenniAnna SeghersJorge AmadoAwarded December 20, 1952 – Seven winners
Johannes BecherEliza BrancoIlya EhrenburgRev. James Gareth EndicottYves FargeSaifuddin KitchlewPaul RobesonAwarded December 12, 1953 – Ten winners
Andrea AndreenJohn Desmond BernalIsabelle BlumeHoward FastAndrew GaggieroLeon KruczkowskiPablo NerudaNina Vasilevna PopovaSir Sahib Singh SokheyPierre CotAwarded December 18, 1954 – Nine winners
Alain Le LéapBaldomero Sanín CanoPrijonoBertolt BrechtAndré BonnardThakin Kodaw HmaingFelix IversenNicolás GuillénDenis Nowell PrittAwarded December 9, 1955 – Six Winners
Lázaro CárdenasMuhammad al-AshmarKarl Joseph WirthTôn Đức ThắngAkiko SekiRagnar ForbechLouis Aragon (1957)Emmanuel d'Astier (1957)Heinrich Brandweiner (b. 1910) (1957)Danilo Dolci (b. 1924) (1957)María Rosa Oliver (b. 1898) (1957)Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman (1957)Udakandawala Saranankara Thero (b. 1902) (1957)Nikolay Semenovich Tikhonov (1957)Josef Hromádka (1958)Artur Lundkvist (1958)Louis Saillant (1958)Kaoru Yasui (1958)Arnold Zweig (1958)Awarded April 30, 1959
Otto Buchwitz (1959)W. E. B. Du Bois (1959)Nikita Khrushchev (1959)Ivor Montagu (1959)Kostas Varnalis (1959)Awarded May 3, 1960
Laurent Casanova (1960)Cyrus Eaton (1960)Sukarno (1960)Aziz Sharif (1960)Alexander Korneychuk (1960)Awarded April 30, 1961
Fidel Castro (1961)Ostap Dłuski (b. 1892 in Buczacz) (1961)William Morrow (b. 1888) (1961)Rameshwari Nehru (b. 1886) (1961)Mihail Sadoveanu (1961)Antoine Tabet (1961)Ahmed Sékou Touré (1961)Awarded April 30, 1962
Konstantin Simun (1962)István Dobi (1962)Olga Poblete de Espinosa (1962)Faiz Ahmed Faiz (1962)Kwame Nkrumah (1962)Pablo Picasso (1962)Awarded May 1, 1963 – Four Awarded
Modibo Keita (1963)Oscar Niemeyer (1963)Georgi Traikov (1962)Manolis Glezos (1962)Awarded May 1, 1964 – Three awarded
Ahmed Ben BellaDolores Ibárruri (1964)Herluf BidstrupRafael Alberti (1964)Kaoru Ota (1964)Mirjam Vire-Tuominen (1965)Peter Ayodele Curtis Joseph (1965)Jamsrangiin Sambuu (1965)Presented August 14, 1965
Aruna Asaf Ali (1964)Miguel Ángel Asturias (1965)Giacomo Manzù (1965)Awarded May 1, 1967 – Six awards
Herbert Warnke (1966)Rockwell Kent (1966)Ivan Málek (1966)Martin Niemöller (1966)David Alfaro Siqueiros (1966)Bram Fischer (1966)Joris Ivens (1967)Nguyễn Thị Định (1967)Jorge Zalamea (1967)Romesh Chandra (1967)Endre Sík (1967)Jean Effel (1967)Awarded April 16, 1970 – Seven awards
Akira Iwai (b. 1922) (1968–69)Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz (1968–69)Khaled Mohieddin (1968–69)Linus Pauling (1968–69)Shafie Ahmed el Sheikh (b. 1924 – d. 1971) (1968–69)Bertil Svahnström (b. 1907 – d. 1972) (1968–69)Ludvík Svoboda (1968–69)(No awards given in 1971 )
Hikmat Abu Zayd (1970–71)Eric Henry Stoneley Burhop (1970–71)Ernst Busch (1970–71)Tsola Dragoycheva (1970–71)Renato Guttuso (1970–71)Kamal Jumblatt (1970–71)Alfredo Varela (1970–71)Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti (1970–71)Awarded May 1, 1973 – Four awards
James Aldridge (1972)Salvador Allende (1972)Leonid Brezhnev (1972)Enrique Pastorino (1972)Luis Corvalán (1973–74)Raymond Goor (1973–74)Jeanne-Martin Cissé (1973–74)Sam NujomaAwarded May 1977 – Seven Awards
Hortensia Bussi de Allende (1975–76)János Kádár (1975–76)Seán MacBride (1975–76)Samora Machel (1975–76)Agostinho Neto (1975–76)Pierre Pouyade (1975–76)Yannis Ritsos (1975–76)Awarded May 1, 1979 – Six Awards
Kurt Bachmann (1977–78)Freda Yetta Brown (1977–78)Angela Davis (1977–78)Vilma Espín Guillois (1977–78)Kumara Padma Sivasankara Menon (1977–78)Halina Skibniewska (1977–78)Awarded April 30, 1980 – Five Awardees
Hervé Bazin (1979)Lê Duẩn (1979)Urho Kekkonen (1979)Abd al-Rahman al-Hamisi (1979)Miguel Otero Silva (1979)Awarded May 1983 – 4 awards
Mahmoud Darwish (1980–82)John Morgan (1980–82)Líber Seregni (1980–82)Mikis Theodorakis (1980–82)Awarded May 1, 1985 – Six Awards
Indira Gandhi (1983–84)Jean-Marie Legay (1983–84)Eva Palmer (1983–84)Nguyễn Hữu Thọ (1983–84)Luis Vidales (1983–84)Josef Weber (1983–84)Charilaos Florakis (1983–84)Miguel d'Escoto (1985–86)Dorothy Hodgkin (1985–86)Herbert Mies (1985–86)Julius Nyerere (1985–86)Petr Tanchev (1985–86)Evan Litwack (1986–87)Abdul Sattar Edhi (1988)Álvaro Cunhal (1989)Nelson Mandela1 (1990)1. Mandela was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize in 1990 but, due to his trial and imprisonment in South Africa, was unable to accept the prize until 2002.
