[1] It was awarded each year to the best work of fiction, written in the Russian language, as decided by a panel of judges, irrespective of the writer's citizenship.

[10] Chudakov won posthumously with A Gloom Is Cast Upon the Ancient Steps, which takes place in a fictional town in Kazakhstan and describes life under Stalinist Russia.

On 19 September 2019 Foundation Board and the Аward committee of the Russian Booker Prize officially announced the termination of the award.

Already the first decision of the jury, as a result of which the award in 1992 was not received by the generally recognized favorite — the novel "The Time Night" by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, met with almost unanimous disapproval.

The prize focuses on literature that is not interesting either on the domestic or foreign market, or, if it is a convertible author (Ulitskaya, Aksenov), it is awarded not for 'novel of the year', but 'for merits'.

"[64] Yuri Polyakov in 2008 pointed out that "people receive awards not for the quality of a literary text, not for some artistic discovery, not for the ability to reach the reader, but for loyalty to a certain party, mainly experimental-liberal direction.

[66] Literary critic Konstantin Trunin, describing the 2018 crisis of the award, noted: "For all the time of its existence, the prize did not justify itself, each year choosing the winner as a writer who created work that is far from understanding by Russian people of the reality surrounding him.

Being handed twenty-six times, he faced the rejection of sponsors, as a result of which it became necessary to reconsider the meaning of existence, having found the transformation required by the reader to a truly Russian humanistic value system».