Was Pasternak's Path To The Nobel Prize Paved By The CIA?
Did the CIA fund a Russian-language publication of Boris Pasternak's "Doctor Zhivago" in order to help the dissident author win the Nobel Prize? Ivan Tolstoi, a literary historian and correspondent with RFE/RL's Russian Service, has spent the better part of two decades trying to find out. Tolstoi's research has resulted in a book, "The Laundered Novel: Doctor Zhivago, Between the KGB and the CIA,” which was recently published in Russia. In this ... Full Story »
Posted by Derek Hawkins
The piece raises the question of the relationship between politics and literature, which I think is an under-appreciated topic. Pasternak was generally lionised in the western press as a heroic defender of free expression and artistic integrity against a repressive regime, and his Nobel prize was taken by some to support the view that great art is incompatible and will triumph over totalitarianism. The same process applied to Solzhenitsyn and his Nobel later on. Of course, this view failed in the case of Mikhail Sholokov and his Nobel. And of course, few in the West gave a stuff about the contradiction.