LIBERTY PRIZE

Liberty Prize is the first-ever award established specifically for the purpose of recognizing and honoring people who have made an outstanding contribution to the Russian-American culture. It is a non-governmental, non-political, non-partisan prize, bestowed every year since 1999 by an independent jury consisting of artist Grisha Bruskin and writers Alexander Genis and Solomon Volkov, all noted and esteemed members of the Russian-American cultural community.

Liberty Prize is sponsored by the Washington-based organization Russia House, the weekly newspaper Kontinent, and the American University in Moscow. Winners receive cash awards and commemorative plaques at a special ceremony.

The winners of Liberty Prize 2006 pianist Vladimir Ashkenazi and essayist Boris Paramonov will be honored on Sunday, October 22, 2006 in New York .

Vladimir Askenazy shot to fame after he won the 1st prize at the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1962. The same year he gave successful piano recitals in London . In 1963 he emigrated from USSR to Britain . There he began a successful career as a conductor. Since 1981 Ashkenazy was appointed Conductor of the Royal Symphony Orchestra, and from 1987-1994 he was Principal Conductor and Artistic Director of the Royal Symphony Orchestra in London . At the same time, From 1989-1999 Ashkenazy was Principal Conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. From 1998-2003 Vladimir Ashkenazy was Music Director of Czech Philharmonic Orchestra in Prague , Czech Republic . Since 2004 he started a three-year contract as Music Director of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo , Japan .

Vladimir Ashkenazy is currently President of the Rachmaninoff Society. His interpretations of piano concertos by Sergei Rachmaninov are among the best. He also made many other critically acclaimed recordings of piano music including all concertos of Ludwig van Beethoven. He received several Grammy awards as well as other international awards and prizes for his studio recordings and concert performances. His recording of 24 preludes and fugues by Dmitri Shostakovich brought him another Grammy award in 1999. Mr. Ashkenazy is Conductor-Laureat with the Iceland Symphony Orchestrathe, he is also Music Director of Youth Orchestra of the European Union.

Boris Paramonov – outstanding author of philosophical essays with highly provocative thoughts expressed by sharp and filigree forms. In his attempts to explain America to Russia and Russia he always tries to present almost any theme to its logical and psychological limit. The central subject of his writings is the evolution of Russian national character, Russia 's place in the world's civilization, the fate of Russian national culture at the historical crossroads. Despite his immense erudition Paramonov lacks academic pedantry. On the contrary, the main features of his style – temperament, nervous paradoxicalness, ragged expressive composition. Paramonov is the author of many books and is well known in Russia for his brilliant journalistic work at Radio Liberty.

Among the past Award winners were writers Vassily Aksyonov and Vladimir Sorokin, poets Lev Losev and Lev Rubinstein, the Librarian of Congress James Billington, Director of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum Thomas Krens, dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, violinist Gidon Kremer, publisher Irina Prokhorova, and others.

Russia and the United States are two great countries with a long history of complex, sometimes friendly, sometimes adversary relationships. Already in 1835, in the often quoted prediction, Alexis de Tocqueville declared them to be “two great nations”, each of which seemed to be “called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world”. In the second half of the 20th century this prophesy was fulfilled, as we know, all too accurately, as the Soviet Union and the US, locked in a bitter rivalry for the global domination, barely escaped looming nuclear disaster that would have obliterated the whole humankind.

It was a period of acute conflict, but also of intense negotiations between two competing superpowers. And while the main thrust of these negotiations was, of course, political and military, an important role was also played by cultural exchanges. This was possible because both countries, represented by their respective elites, were traditionally eager to assimilate the cultural riches of the opposite side.
Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov have always been popular in the United States, while every Russian is familiar with Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, and Jack London. Paradoxically, some American writers, like Mayne Reid or Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, became, thanks to excellent translations, more popular in Russia than in their home country.

Russian intellectuals have eagerly absorbed the writings of William Faulkner and John Steinbeck and the alluring sounds of American jazz, while American intellectuals have championed the prose and lyrics of Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam and the works of such glorious Russian avant-garde painters as Vassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich.

The US also became the refuge for a unique group of Russian cultural émigrés, some of whom – such as writer Vladimir Nabokov, composer Igor Stravinsky, and choreographer George Balanchine – eventually established themselves as leading figures of the American culture.

The American-Russian cultural symbiosis continued to thrive in the later years, as other brilliant personalities, such as the Nobel Prize-winning poet Joseph Brodsky and ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, exerted their influence on American cultural tastes and attitudes, while Americanizing themselves in the process.

This is what the Russian-American culture is all about: global cultural interchange that could in some ways serve as a model for our turbulent times.

In spite of understandable difficulties, various crises and impediments, the Russian-American culture continues to flourish, thanks to the artistic impulses of its creators and the tireless efforts of its farsighted champions. The purpose of the Liberty Prize is to celebrate both these courageous efforts.

Every year’s winners are chosen because of their role in strengthening the American-Russian relations in general and their cultural aspects in particular. Their work is a unique model of interacting international artistic messages.