Starting with the refusal to crown the great L. Tolstoy, the Swedish Academy awarded only a few Russian writers with a prestigious award. The first was I. Bunin, an emigrant and stateless person; then a real drama with tragic collisions broke out, reflecting the collision of two systems and opposing B. Pasternak and M. Sholokhov. Among those rejected are geniuses and celebrities (M. Gorky, N. Berdyaev, V. Nabokov), a whole galaxy of writers from Russian abroad (K. Balmont, D. Merezhkovsky, I. Shmelev, M. Aldanov, B. Zaitsev, P. Krasnov) and several Soviet authors (L. Leonov, A. Akhmatova, K. Pah Ustovsky). The archive of the Swedish Academy (Stockholm) opens after fifty years of storing documents, including nomination letters, expert reviews and final minutes of meetings of the Nobel Committee. Based on these materials 1901-1966. with the involvement of Swedish periodicals, a monograph is based that opens some unknown pages of Russian literature and its reception in the West.