Bely, Andrei, pseud. of Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev, 1880-1934, Russian writer. A leading symbolist, he had a close but stormy relationship with Aleksandr Blok. His poetry includes the four-volume Symphonies (1901-8); his best prose is in the novels The Silver Dove (1910) and Petersburg (1912, tr. 1959) and in Kotik Letayev (1922), an autobiographical novel in the manner of James Joyce. He was an experimenter—his involved style often mixes realism and symbolism in complex forms. In his later years Bely was influenced by Rudolph Steiner's anthroposophy. He accepted the Soviet regime, but his works were not well received by Soviet critics. By the mid-1970s Western critics had discovered Bely, and several, including Vladimir Nabokov, proclaimed him the most important Russian writer of the 20th cent. In 1974 new translations of The Silver Dove and Kotik Letayev were published in the United States, and in 1977 a new translation of Petersburg.

Bely (Бе́лый) is a town in Tver Oblast, Russia, situated on the Obsha River, about halfway between Smolensk (to the west), Toropets (to the north), and Rzhev (to the south-east). Population: 4,400 (2003 est.); 4,350 (2002 Census); 6,900 (1897).

Bely is the Russian for "white", although it is a moot point why the epithet came to be applied to this town. It was first noticed in 1359 as a fort in the principality of Smolensk, passing to Lithuania by the end of the century. In the 15th century, it became a seat of the Belsky branch of the ruling House of Gediminas. The town was overrun by Muscovy in 1503. Three years later, they built a formidable castle, which the Lithuanians laid a siege to in 1508. The town was again subordinated to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth between 1618 and 1654.