The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book
Peter Finn, Petra Couvée
Language: English
Pages: 384
ISBN: 0345803191
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Zhivago Affair is the dramatic, never-before-told story—drawing on newly declassified files—of how a forbidden book became a secret CIA weapon in the ideological battle between East and West.
In May 1956, an Italian publishing scout went to a village outside Moscow to visit Russia’s greatest living poet, Boris Pasternak. He left carrying the manuscript of Pasternak’s only novel, suppressed by Soviet authorities. From there the life of this extraordinary book entered the realm of the spy novel. The CIA published a Russian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago and smuggled it into the Soviet Union. Copies were devoured in Moscow and Leningrad, sold on the black market, and passed from friend to friend. Pasternak’s funeral in 1960 was attended by thousands who defied their government to bid him farewell, and his example launched the great tradition of the Soviet writer-dissident. First to obtain CIA files providing proof of the agency’s involvement, Peter Finn and Petra Couvée take us back to a remarkable Cold War era when literature had the power to stir the world.
(With 8 pages of black-and-white illustrations.)
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost: A Novel
House of Day, House of Night (Writings from an Unbound Europe)
Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Janssens at the Archive of the Royal Palace in Brussels; Patricia Quaghebeur of the KADOC (Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society) in Leuven, Belgium; Johanna Couvée for research in the academic libraries in Brussels; Delfina Boero, Paola Pellegatta, Vladimir Kolupaev at the Fondazione Russia Christiana, Villa Ambiveri in Seriate, Italy; Lars Rydquist at the Nobel Library; Magnus Ljunggren in Stockholm; Elisabet Lind for her warm hospitality in Stockholm; Linda
in University of Michigan Special Collections Library: Box 7 of the Ardis Collection Records, Folder heading Ardis Author/Name Files—Morrow, Felix. Some of Pasternak’s French friends believed: Boris Pasternak, Lettres à mes amies françaises (1956–1960), 41. a theory that has periodically resurfaced: Dutch intelligence officials believed the target of the printing for the CIA was the Nobel Prize. C. C. van den Heuvel, interview by Petra Couvée, February 22, 1999. See also Chris Vos, De Geheime
Interviews), 713. “all hunted and tormented poets”: Bakhyt Kenzheyev, email message to Couvée, May 10, 2006. Yet the order of the acts is planned: Boris Pasternak, “Zhivago’s Poems,” Doctor Zhivago (1958), 467. Bibliography ARCHIVES: UNITED STATES The National Archives, College Park, Maryland: General Records of the Department of State, 1955–1959: Travel by Soviet Officials to Belgium Awards by Sweden to Citizens of the USSR Internal Political Affairs of the USSR Literature in the USSR
to Peredelkino noted that he could pause at certain moments as if recognizing the impact “of his own extraordinary face … half closing his slanted brown eyes, turning his head away, reminiscent of a horse balking.” Pasternak greeted his visitors with firm handshakes. His smile was exuberant, almost childlike. Pasternak enjoyed the company of foreigners, a distinct pleasure in the Soviet Union, which only began to open up to outsiders after the death of Stalin in 1953. Another Western visitor to
overseen by a sympathetic young editor, Nikolai Bannikov. “This may put an end to the poetry volume!” she shouted. She was also afraid for her own safety. “I’ve been in prison once, remember, and already then, in the Lubyanka, they questioned me endlessly about what the novel would say.… I’m really amazed you could do this.” Pasternak was a little sheepish, but unapologetic. “Really, now, Olya, you’re overstating things, it’s nothing at all. Just let them read it. If they like it, let them do
