When Russian author, Boris Pasternak finished his novel Dr Zhivago in 1956, Soviet authorities refused to publish it on the grounds that it failed to correctly portray socialist realism. So Pasternak took the brave step to smuggle the manuscript to an Italian publisher.
After first being published in Italian in 1957, the English translation of his book appeared, to great acclaim, on 5 September 1958, and Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature that same year. The Soviet authorities forced him to decline the prize, but the Nobel committee gave it anyway. Had he attended the ceremony in Stockholm, he’d have been refused re-entry into his homeland. The prize was finally accepted by his descendants in 1988.
The publication of his book was seen as “an inimical political act”, while the novel itself was condemned as “slanderous and inartistic” and “reactionary hackwork”. He was formally denounced and expelled from the Writers’ Union.
However, the US CIA felt that the novel could be used as a cultural weapon against the Soviet Union. They had copies especially printed in Russian to be given out for free to Russians attending conferences in the West, in the hopes they would take their copies home and share them with others, so that Russians could see that the Soviet lifestyle was far from perfect.
Pasternak was attacked for his anti-patriotism, his home was bugged, he was followed by the KGB and few of his friends dared visit him. Yet by 1960 his novel had been translated into 25 languages and won awards, while royalty payments had accumulated for him in the West, which he could not access.
In the 1980s, with Perestroika, Pasternak’s name began to clear. His novel, which had been circulating underground for decades, was officially published in Russian in 1988. Plaques and monuments have now been erected in his honour.