December 21, 1949
The Soviet Union created the International Stalin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Peoples in honor of Joseph Stalin’s seventieth birthday. Following Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956, the prize was renamed 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. In 1991, after the USSR had collapsed, the Russian government, as the successor state to the defunct Soviet Union, ended the award program. Recipients of the prize (as many as 10 were awarded each year) include Paul Robeson, Pablo Neruda, Bertolt Brecht, WEB DuBois, Fidel Castro, Pablo Picasso, Martin Niemöller, Angela Davis and Mahmoud Darwish. The last recipient, in 1990, was Nelson Mandela.
