The ‘Doctor Zhivago’ Nobel Dust-up

Your brother, we all admired his poetry. Ah, yes, everyone admires him....now. We couldn’t admire him when we weren’t allowed to read his poems comrad a General.

The human spirit and the ability to see the worth of life and living know no political boundaries, in fact, no boundaries at all. To this day Pasternak touches us all. Too bad so many do not realize it.

Sometimes when I read Zhivago, I turn to the poems in the end, put on Rachmannioffs music and feel the soul of Russia........

As indicated by the great number of articles reprinted here, the promotion of Pasternak, along with such fellow anti-Communist "dissidents" as Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn, was an effort of tremendous importance to the US in their propaganda war against the USSR. Not only front page in The Times, its publication was publicized in a half hour CBS program broadcast nationally. As to the book: Nabokov said ZHIVAGO was "a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic." Yevteshenko said that he was never able to finish reading it. The daily book reviewer for the Times, Orville Prescott, admitted that, had the book not been written by a Soviet author, it "would be unlikely to cause much stir." This trite romance was hailed as a masterpiece for being anti-Soviet. According to Peter Finn and Petra Couvee in their book, THE ZHIVAGO AFFAIR, the Italian publication of the novel, along with its distribution at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair, were actually the work of the American Central Intelligence Agency. They also recount how, as the millions piled up in foreign royalties, Western agents delivered to Pasternak hundreds of thousands of rubles, much of it spent on (or by) his 22 years younger mistress, who later was sent to prison for currency smuggling. The view of the Soviet man in the street was that Pasternak was an egotist who didn't care that his book was found so useful by his country's enemies. Young workers picketed his house.

The Soviet Union did not fail because of Zhivago. The Soviet Union failed because it banned Zhivago. Pasternak’s work will live as long as humanity survives on this planet.

I named my daughter Lara.

Boris Pasternak, with his peers Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam and Marina Tsvetaeva, brought to Russian poetry it’s Silver Age (Alexander Pushkin already the main representative of what is called the Golden Age. . . .) As influential as “Dr. Zhivago” is, it was Pasternak’s poetry with its indelible beauty that touched ordinary Russians. He struggled continually with the Soviet authorities — as did Akhmatova and Mandelstam, in particular. Pasternak sought out a precarious cease fire with them. Akhmatova, however, had a son imprisoned and Mandelstam was put to death by the authorities for his writing. It’s this story that still resonates, how Russian poets created works of great art that also conveyed a moral authority that put human dignity first, before the claims of the Soviet state. In the face of oppression and torture, these writers wouldn’t break faith with what they saw as their duty to the Russian people. As we cherish Pasternak, let us cherish them all. Their example still has relevance to each of us.

"Doctor Zhivago," with its mystical view of the world, paralleled by historical events, inspired me in the late sixties when I read it. The barometer of a great novel, imho, is its ability to reveal its layers of themes decades later, as Zhivago does. My understanding is that Zhivago's gravesite in Peredelkino Cemetery, Moscow, remains a pilgrimage for many Russian youth. Amazing the great literature that came out of the totalitarian experience under Stalin. Continue to rest in peace, Boris Pasternak.

He was one of the greats. Here a little boy born of holocaust survivors in Canada saw a picture of all that his parents had talked about. He (I) was told by his parents "...return to Poland, it was a beautiful world there for us, filled, yes, with much hardship, but a beautiful religious life as well. We could not leave, do not regret that we did not only wish we knew more as how many good people, Poles, and so many others nationalities, relgions, how the good people would be stepped on by the bad. Go back to help those good people...we forgive buyt never forget." The author could not leave for there is something in a land that tried to habour your people for a thousand years. I got my PhD in Constitutional law specializing in human rights and for over thirty years started and ran what was the largest private human rights NGO working out of Poland for Eastern Europe. My heart is in Canada but I found my soul in Poland....just like my parents said, as the author writes about Russia.

I love him as a poet. Love him as a human being. Love his passion for language and the courage he had as a man during his lifetime. He was Nobel, he was Noble. I share a birthday with him and he is a part of my soul. The poem below is one I had never seen before although I know all about this story. Thank you for this great gift today. When the world is so dark.