The Sunday Times, January 14, 2007
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2546110.html
The Sunday Times January 14, 2007
How the CIA won Zhivago a Nobel
Mark Franchetti, Moscow
NEARLY 50 years after Boris Pasternak was awarded the
Nobel prize for a body of work culminating in the epic Doctor Zhivago, it
has emerged that British intelligence and the CIA secretly facilitated the
accolade to embarrass the Kremlin, which had banned the novel. A new book
reveals that American agents led an operation to publish a Russian-language
version of Doctor Zhivago to comply with Nobel rules requiring that works be
considered in their original language. NI_MPU('middle'); _I
have no doubt whatsoever that the CIA played a key role in ensuring
Pasternak received the Nobel prize,_ said the book's author, Ivan Tolstoy, a
respected Moscow researcher. Immortalised by David Lean_s film, which won
five Oscars, Doctor Zhivago was first published in Milan in 1957. It tells
the tragic story of a doctor poet, Yuri Zhivago, and the love of his life,
Lara, against the backdrop of the Bolshevik revolution. It was banned in the
Soviet Union
until 1987. Pasternak sent several copies of the manuscript in Russian to
friends in the West. Tolstoy has now discovered a letter from a former CIA
agent describing the operation that followed. He says the CIA _ aided by the
British _ stole a copy from a plane that was forced to land in Malta.
While passengers waited for two hours, agents took the manuscript from a
suitcase, photographed it and returned it. The CIA then published the
Russian edition in Europe and America simultaneously. _They avoided using
paper which could be identified as Western-made. They chose special fonts
commonly used in Russia and printed chapters in separate locations to
prevent it from falling into the wrong hands,_ said Tolstoy, who is hoping
to see his book, The Laundered Novel, published in the West. Members of
the Swedish Academy were surprised to be presented with copies of a Russian
edition just in time for them to consider Pasternak for the 1958 prize. Two
days after hearing that
he had won, the writer sent a telegram to the Academy: _Immensely thankful,
touched, proud, astonished, abashed._ Four days later, under intense
Kremlin pressure, Pasternak sent a second telegram: _I must reject this
undeserved prize which has been presented to me. Please do not receive my
voluntary rejection with displeasure._ Pasternak was harassed by the KGB
and threatened with expulsion from Russia. After his death in 1960, the
Kremlin ordered the arrest of Olga Ivinskaya, his mistress and the
inspiration for Lara. Ivinskaya and her daughter were charged with
receiving _illegal_ royalties from the publication of Doctor Zhivago abroad.
Ivinskaya was sentenced to eight years_ hard labour in Siberia, her daughter
to three. An international uproar led to Ivinskaya_s release four years
early. _My father played no role in the publication of a Russian edition,
nor had he any idea of the CIA_s interest,_ said Yevgeny Pasternak, who
accepted the Nobel prize on his
father_s behalf in 1989. _My father never expected to receive the prize.
Sadly it brought him a lot of sorrow and suffering._
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