Doctor Zhivago (Russian: Доктор Живаго) is a novel by the Russian writer Boris Pasternak from 1957. The centerpiece is the love story of the young doctor-poet Zhivago, which is intertwined with the events surrounding the Russian Revolution and the subsequent Civil War.
Less well known is the role of the CIA in the publication of the novel.
Petra Couvée provided a text edition of the collected works of the Russian émigré poet Anna Prismanova. She translated work by M. Tsvetaeva, N. Teffi, G. Ivanov, N. Gogol, V. Nabokov and B. Akhmadulina, among others. Couvée in De pearl duiker: “The tests will be taken to Europe to be printed on un-American paper, so that all traces of America are erased. The printed copies will then be distributed to tourists from the Soviet Union, who was also represented there.”
Within the Soviet Union itself, the novel was initially completely banned. The Russian Writers’ Union and the literary magazine Novy Mir disapproved of the novel, as its spirit was considered contrary to the socialist revolution.
Due to the refusal of the Soviet publishers to publish the story, the book was first published in Italy in November 1957. Pasternak had approached the Italian publisher Feltrinelli for this purpose. He deliberately corresponded with this publishing house in several languages, what he wrote to them in Russian and could therefore be controlled by the Soviet leaders was only intended as a diversionary maneuver. The real correspondence was in French.
Pasternak then started looking for a way to get his novel published in Russia. For this purpose he approached the French Slavist Jacqueline de Proyart, who became his agent.
The first actual Russian edition appeared in The Hague in 1958 and was edited by Peter de Ridder, who had worked closely with the Internal Security Service, which in turn received financial support from the CIA. The latter authority may have been out to deceive the Soviet leaders, since Pasternak would now be eligible for the most important literary prize in existence thanks to the Russian publication, while he was a controversial writer within his own country. Since Feltrinelli Publishers now had the publishing rights in the West, Feltrinelli Milan had to be written on the title page.
photo wikipedia rv
