Doctor Zhivago

by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak, B. Pasternak

English language

Published Nov. 7, 1958 by Pantheon.

(9 reviews)

This epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. The book quickly became an international best-seller.

Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel.**

--------- Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak's only novel, is set between the early 1900s and World War II and contains complex plot lines and …

--------- Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak's only novel, is set between the early 1900s and World War II and contains complex plot lines and themes, including criticisms of the role of the government in the lives of citizens, and criticisms of the October Revolution and its aftermath. The book had been submitted for publication to Novyi Mir in 1956 and had been initially accepted, but at the last moment its publication was revoked by the authorities.

However, a publisher in Milan had received a copy of the typescript from an Italian literary scout operating in Moscow and in 1957 the publisher, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, released an Italian-language edition of Doctor Zhivago. The CIA, seeing the novel as a potent propaganda tool in the era of the Cold War, acquired a copy of the typescript in the original Russian in the summer of 1958. The agency promptly contacted the Dutch intelligence services which facilitated printing of the novel in the Hague with CIA funds to cover the print run. One thousand copies of the novel were published by Mouton Publishers but under Feltrinelli's imprint. The copies were distributed among CIA headquarters and Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, London, Paris, and Brussels.

In 1958 the first post-war World's Fair was held in Brussels with Soviet Union and United States building large exhibitions as part of the event. As the role of the United States in the publication of the novel could not have been compromised, the CIA turned to the Vatican pavilion to help distribute the books during the fair. The CIA considered the operation to be a great success. However, since a contract was never signed between the Dutch publisher and Feltrinelli, the latter was furious when he learned about the distribution of the novel in Brussels and threatened legal action. Mouton issued an apology and agreed to an "indemnity obligation" to print an additional five thousand copies for Feltrinelli

Following the success of the first printing of the novel, the CIA decided to fund a second print run of seven thousand copies for individuals who would take them into the Soviet Union. Each of the copies was stamped as coming from the Societe d'Edition et d'Impression Mondiale, a nonexistent French publisher. Further deception was provided by a Russian emigre group in the distribution of the copies.

Even though the scandal sparked interest and rumors, the involvement of the CIA in the publication of the novel was not confirmed until April, 2014.

52 editions

4thace reviewed Doctor Zhivago by Boris Leonidovich Pasternak

Review of 'Doctor Zhivago' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

To think of this book as another in the line of big Russian books set during wartime is probably to miss a lot of what the author was after. While the centerpiece of the story is the First World War and the Russian Revolution, which cannot be separated from the main themes of the novel, the reaction of the main character to what is happening around him and inside of him is not primarily about war, or politics, or even love. We spend most of the book looking through Yuri Zhivago's eyes, but we only rarely get the sense that he is able to put together a coherent picture of what is happening and why, or what it all might mean. Things happen according to their own logic, not because they make practical sense in a realistic manner, but to express some deep intention of the author's. It feels authentically tragic in the end, both the hardships caused by war and the fulfillment brought by love only to be lost. The way that other people move in and out of the main character's life feels both stylized but also natural, at least it does to a person like me who has lived long enough to know that what happens over the course of a life doesn't always being tidy or orderly. At least as important as the events which happen are the intensely charged lyrical passages, frequently at the head of a section, where we see the natural world and fragments of the world constructed by society with all the intensity a poet can bring to the task. The Soviet authorities opposing Pasternak wanted a story which gave a lesson in line with the doctrine of the time, but instead what we encounter is a tale where the various characters grasp at anything they have to bring meaning to what they see, whether it is Christianity, mystical paganism, western empirical thought, or a kind of tribal trust in one's own family and small community. It rings true, and it was not what the authorities wanted.

The Lara character is shown for maybe half of the book, not all the way through as I had somehow expected. She is a woman who brings a tumultuous train of story elements along with her, and Zhivago is drawn to her as though by a law of nature. And in the end, he finds that he has to separate from her by an equally strict set of rules, even though they both love one another deeply. The sections where they are together are not sexy as much as they depict their bond as one with a certain rightness, even if illicit, dangerous, and ultimately doomed. After they are apart, it is as though Zhivago knows already that they will never meet again in life, so he cannot even strive to bring about a reunion. He's a different person, with a damaged circulatory system in the same way his emotional center itself is damaged. In the epilogue we see how life continues without him, during another war which is only lightly alluded to.

The audio narration was good, not too flashy or overusing different voices for all of the characters, only a slight indication of gender or social class, and in one class a comical foreign accent. He lets the horrific scenes and the rapturous lyric scenes speak for themselves.