Laureates

The most prestigious and seldom awarded title for artists in the Stalin era was People's Artist of the Soviet Union. The second most significant type of reward was the Stalin Prize. The distribution of these awards provides a useful marker of the music world's prestige hierarchy. Almost half of the 65 recipients of the title People's Artist between 1936 and 1947 were musicians, and the rest were major theater figures.  Between 1941 and 1949, sixty-one Stalin prizes were awarded to musicians, including Sergei Prokofiev. He received the Prize on 24 June 1947 for his violin sonata no 1 in F minor, opus 80. 

Kirill Tomoff, Creative Union. The professional organization of Soviet composers...(2006)