“There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world; and that is an
idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo

Abe Books recently sold an original, Russian language copy of Boris Pasternak’s Nobel Prize-winning novel, Doctor Zhivago, for $11,000. As part of the sale, the bookseller researched the tortured history of the book and found a story almost as tragic and star-crossed as the novel itself. Pasternak penned his novel in the early 20th century, but wasn’t published and made available to readers until 1957.

Though it’s been called “the greatest literary event of postwar Russia,” Doctor Zhivago wasn’t published there until 1988, more than 30 years after its Western release. Censors feared its revolutionary impact, blocked it from publication, and expelled Pasternak from the Soviet Writer’s Union. His controversial novel was rescued from oblivion by Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, an Italian publisher who discovered Doctor Zhivago through a litery scout and after reading it, felt a deep responsibility to see it published.

It was originally planned for release in both Russia and Italy, but the Russian publication was blocked. Feltrinelli had the manuscript smuggled out of Russia and into Milan, where it was released in Italian in 1957. Less than a year later, more than 1,000 copies were secretly published in the United States in the original Russian. The novel went on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958; intense pressure from the Soviet government — including the threat of exile — forced Pasternak to refuse the prize. In 1965, it was made into a popular film which won five Academy Awards and as of 2014, adjusted for inflation, remains the 8th highest-grossing movie of all time.

The US original edition was actually published by the CIA, which distributed copies in 1958 to Soviet citizens visiting the Brussels World’s Fair as part of a Cold War propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the USSR.

Why did Doctor Zhivago strike such a chord with the Italian publisher, Feltrinelli? Some speculate that Yuri Zhivago’s background mirrored his own: As a wealthy, privileged young man, he found himself increasingly disillusioned with the status quo in his country just as Pasternak’s fictional hero did.

What a fascinating story! And how amazing to think that the American government “recruited” the poet Pasternak to help fight the Cold War. Write on!