Doctor Zhivago

ALSO TRANSLATED BY
RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

The Brothers Karamazov
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Crime and Punishment
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Demons
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dead Souls
by Nikolai Gogol
The Eternal Husband and Other Stories
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Master and Margarita
by Mikhail Bulgakov
The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
War and Peace
by Leo Tolstoy
Stories
by Anton Chekhov
The Complete Short Novels of Anton Chekhov
The Idiot
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Adolescent
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Double and The Gambler
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories
by Leo Tolstoy

The first edition of
Doctor Zhivago
, the major work of one of the most important Russian writers of the twentieth century, was an Italian translation published in 1957. The next year translations of the novel into English and a number of other languages appeared and Russian-language editions were published in Italy and the United States. But it would take another thirty years and the reforms of perestroika before the novel could be published in Russia. Those circumstances and all that determined them made the reception of the book highly problematical at the time of its appearance.

Pasternak had spent ten years, from 1946 to 1955, writing
Doctor Zhivago.
He considered it the work that justified his life and his survival, when so many of his fellow Russians had perished during the first decades of the century from war, revolution, famine, forced labor, and political terror. After Stalin’s death in 1953 came a period known as the Thaw, when there was a general easing of the mechanisms of repression and ideological control. The ban then in place on Pasternak’s work (he had been in and out of favor time and again over the years) was lifted, and in 1954 he was able to publish ten poems from
Doctor Zhivago
in the journal
Znamya
(“The Banner”), where the title of the novel was mentioned for the first time. In January 1956, he sent the completed work to
Novy Mir
(“New World”), the most liberal of Moscow literary magazines, and it was also under consideration by Goslitizdat, the state publishing house.

In March 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist
Party and virtual head of the government, made a “secret speech” to the twentieth party congress denouncing the crimes of Stalin. This speech, which immediately became known all over the world, seemed to herald a further opening up of Soviet society. But in fact the thaw was brief. Stirrings of liberation following Khrushchev’s speech, especially in such satellite countries as Hungary and Poland, worried the party leadership and caused them to tighten the controls again. The Poznan protests at the end of June were crushed by military force, as were the Polish and Hungarian uprisings later that same year.

The chill made itself felt in literary circles as well. In September 1956, the editors of
Novy Mir
returned the manuscript of
Doctor Zhivago
to Pasternak with a detailed letter explaining that the spirit of the novel, its emotional content, and the author’s point of view were incompatible with the spirit of the revolution and the Marxist ideology that was the theoretical foundation of the Soviet state.

Pasternak was not surprised by the rejection. He had anticipated it, and in anticipation had even taken an extraordinary step, which surprised and outraged the Soviet authorities when they learned of it. In May 1956, an Italian Communist journalist by the name of Sergio d’Angelo visited Pasternak at his country house in Peredelkino, a writers’ village near Moscow. He had heard about the existence of
Doctor Zhivago
and offered to place it with the Milanese publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli (also a Communist) for publication in Italian translation. According to d’Angelo’s account, Pasternak, after hesitating for a moment, went to his study, brought out a copy of the novel, and handed it to him with the words: “You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squad.” Since 1929, when Evgeny Zamyatin and Boris Pilnyak were vilified in the press for publishing their works abroad, no Soviet writers had had direct dealings with foreign publishers. Zamyatin had been forced to emigrate, and Pilnyak had eventually been shot. Pasternak knew that very well, of course, but he was intent on seeing
Zhivago
published abroad, if it could not be published at home, and was prepared to face the wrath of the authorities.

When publication of the Italian translation was announced for the fall of 1957, the news caused great uneasiness in the Soviet literary bureaucracy. Pressure was put on Pasternak to make Feltrinelli return the manuscript for revision, telegrams were sent to Milan, and finally, in October 1957, Alexei Surkov, the head of the Writers’ Union, went to Italy to speak with the publisher in person. But Feltrinelli refused to delay the novel’s release and had already licensed translation rights to publishers in other countries. As Lazar Fleishman wrote in
Boris Pasternak: The Poet and His Politics:

In the spring of 1958, rumors began to circulate that Pasternak was a likely candidate for that year’s Nobel Prize in Literature. In fact, his name had been mentioned for the prize a number of times before. The Nobel Committee’s attention was not drawn to him solely because of
Doctor Zhivago.
But the novel, and the politics of the Cold War, certainly had much to do with his nomination this time. On October 23, 1958, it was announced that the prize had indeed been awarded to Pasternak. The Swedish Academy’s telegram cited him “for his important achievement both in contemporary lyric poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition.”

The next day the head of the Moscow section of the Writers’ Union, Konstantin Fedin, who was Pasternak’s friend and neighbor in Peredelkino, and who had spoken enthusiastically of
Zhivago
when he first read it in 1956, called on him and tried to persuade him not to accept the prize because of its political implications. But Pasternak refused to be persuaded. He sent a telegram of acceptance to the Swedish Academy that read simply: “Immensely thankful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed.” On October 25, the attacks on him began with an article in
Literaturnaya Gazeta
(“The Literary Gazette”) suggesting that the publication of the book and the award of the prize were merely a political provocation. On October 26, the campaign expanded to the national press with a vicious article in
Pravda
(“Truth”). On October 27, Pasternak was tried in absentia by the governing board of the Writers’ Union and expelled from the union, which meant losing his right to living quarters and all possibility of earning money by his work. His house in Peredelkino was surrounded by the secret police, and it was hinted that if he went to Sweden for the award ceremony, he might not be allowed to return. This last possibility, along with the danger in which he had put those closest to him, finally led him to
refuse the prize. On October 29, he sent a second telegram to the Swedish Academy: “In view of the meaning attributed to this award in the society to which I belong, I must refuse the undeserved prize that has been bestowed on me. Do not take my voluntary rejection with any ill will.”

Though this second telegram might seem to be a capitulation on Pasternak’s part, it shows no repentance and clearly places the blame on Soviet society. In official circles this was taken as a still greater offense. The attacks on him continued. And the fact that very few of those who attacked him had read the book was no obstacle. At a meeting in Moscow on October 31, some eight hundred writers voted in favor of a resolution asking the government to “deprive the traitor B. Pasternak of Soviet citizenship.” The text of the resolution was published in
Literaturnaya Gazeta
the next day. In response, Pasternak’s close friends drew up a letter to Khrushchev in his name, asking that this extreme measure not be carried out. Pasternak contributed only two brief sentences to the letter: “I am bound to Russia by my birth, my life, and my work. I cannot imagine my fate separated from and outside Russia.” The letter was published in
Pravda
on November 1 and eased the tensions somewhat. A second public statement, also drawn up with very little participation from Pasternak, was published in
Pravda
on November 6 and more or less ended the “Nobel scandal.” Pasternak died a year and a half later. In December 1989, his son, Evgeny Borisovich Pasternak, was finally able to go to Stockholm to receive his father’s Nobel medal and diploma.