The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and a Forbidden Book

by Peter Finn

  Dmitri Polikarpov, who along with Surkov had led the efforts to suppress the novel’s publication in Italy the previous year, urged his comrades to go on the offensive to oppose Pasternak’s candidacy. In a memo for the Central Committee, Polikarpov suggested that the newspapers Pravda, Izvestiya, and Literaturnaya Gazeta should immediately run articles about Sholokhov’s writing, and his public activities. (Sholokhov was a member of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the country’s highest legislative body.) Polikarpov said that the newspapers should also emphasize that Sholokhov, who had written nothing of note in years, had just completed the second volume of Virgin Soil Upturned. The first volume had come out in 1932.

  Polikarpov also wanted the Soviet embassy in Stockholm to reach out to its contacts in the arts in Sweden and explain to them that selecting Pasternak would be “an unfriendly act.” A few days later, the novelist and former war correspondent Boris Polevoi wrote to warn the Central Committee that the West might attempt to create an anti-Soviet “sensation” out of the Nobel Prize, and use it to stress the “lack of freedom of speech in the Soviet Union” and to claim there is “political pressure on certain authors.” Polevoi recognized Pasternak’s literary gifts but regarded him as alien to Soviet letters—“a man of immense talent; but he’s a foreign body in our midst.”

  The Swedish Academy had experienced and rejected Soviet pressure before. In 1955, Dag Hammarskjöld, a member, wrote to a colleague, “I would vote against Sholokhov with a conviction based not only on artistic grounds and not only as an automatic response to attempts to pressure us, but also on the ground that a prize to a Soviet author today, involving as it would the kind of political motivations that would readily be alleged, is to me an idea with very little to recommend it.”

  Any efforts on Sholokhov’s behalf failed again. The academy shortlisted three candidates for consideration: Pasternak; Alberto Moravia; and Karen Blixen (pen name Isak Dinesen), the Danish author who wrote Out of Africa in 1937.

  By mid-September, Yekaterina Furtseva was requesting potential responses in the event that Pasternak won. Remarkably, Polevoi and Surkov said that Doctor Zhivago should be quickly published in a small edition of 5,000 to 10,000 copies that would not be sold to the general public but would be distributed to a select audience. They argued that such a printing would “make it impossible for the bourgeois media to make a scandal.”

  The proposal was rejected because the head of the Central Committee’s culture department concluded that the Western press would make a scandal whether the book was published or not. Moreover, he feared, if the novel was published in the Soviet Union, it almost certainly would appear in other Eastern Bloc countries where it was also banned.

  Instead, Polikarpov and other members of the Central Committee formulated a series of measures to be followed if the Swedish Academy took the “hostile act” of awarding the prize to Pasternak. Mikhail Suslov, the Kremlin’s éminence grise and chief ideologist, signed off on the proposals.

  The campaign to vilify the author began to take shape: The 1956 Novy Mir rejection letter should be published in Literaturnaya Gazeta. Pravda should run a “satirical article” denouncing the novel and “unveiling the true intentions of the bourgeois press’s hostile campaign around the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Pasternak.” A group of prominent Soviet writers should issue a joint statement that the award was an effort to ignite the Cold War. Finally, Pasternak should be told to refuse the Nobel, “since the award does not serve the interests of our Motherland.”

  In the summer, Pasternak was visited in Peredelkino by the Swedish critic Erik Mesterton, who was an expert for the academy. The two discussed the Nobel Prize and any risk the award might entail for Pasternak. Mesterton also met Surkov and when he returned to Sweden he told Österling that the prize could be awarded to Pasternak despite the political shadow over the author in Moscow. Pasternak mistakenly believed that the Swedish Academy would not make him the laureate without the approval of the Soviet authorities—and that, he thought, would never be forthcoming. He continued to meet other Swedish visitors and told them that he “would have no hesitation about receiving the prize.” Pasternak continued to stress the eternal values in his work and his distance from the polemics of the Cold War. “In this era of world wars, in this atomic age … we have learned that we are the guests of existence, travellers between two stations,” he told Nils Åke Nilsson, another Swedish academic close to the academy. “We must discover security within ourselves. During our short span of life we must find our own insights into our relationship with the existence in which we participate so briefly. Otherwise, we cannot live!”

  Pasternak occasionally seemed hesitant about the growing speculation, telling his sister, “I wish this could happen in a year’s time, not before. There will be so many undesirable complications.” He sensed that the political threat to his position was only “temporarily eased” and that official silence masked seething hostility.

  These concerns were mostly private. With the foreign visitors who alighted at his door, he was as voluble as ever, and he could appear supremely indifferent to the probability that he was being closely monitored. “He several times referred to the Soviet way of life with a grin and an airy wave in the direction of his windows as vsyo eto: ‘all that,’ ” the British scholar Ronald Hingley recalled. When Hingley told Pasternak that he was nervous about a lecture he had to give at Moscow University, Pasternak dismissed his fears: “Never mind that; let them look at a free man.” But when Hingley and Pasternak, who were chatting in the writer’s upstairs study, saw a black sedan slowly and repeatedly pass the house, Pasternak stiffened.

  Russian friends feared for him. Chukovsky warned Pasternak against attending a poetry evening at the Writers House because he feared that some of those in attendance “will turn the reading into a riot—just what Surkov wants.” At an evening event of Italian poetry that fall, Surkov was asked why Pasternak was not present. Surkov told the audience that Pasternak had written “an anti-Soviet novel against the spirit of the Russian Revolution and had sent it abroad for publication.”

  In September, Österling argued before the academy that it should choose Pasternak, and not worry about any political fallout. “I strongly recommend this candidacy and think that if it gets the majority of the votes, the Academy can make its decision with a clear conscience—regardless of the temporary difficulty that Pasternak’s novel, so far, cannot appear in the Soviet Union.”

  In a last-minute bid to postpone the award for at least a year, Pasternak’s German friend the poet Renate Schweitzer wrote to the Swedish Academy on October 19 and enclosed a page from a letter Pasternak had sent her. In it, Pasternak said that “one step out of place—and the people closest to you will be condemned to suffer from all the jealousy, resentment, wounded pride, and disappointment of others, and old scars on the heart will be reopened.” Schweitzer implored the committee to delay making an award to Pasternak for a year. Österling circulated the letter within the academy just before the final vote, but he told the members that the purported letter by Pasternak was not signed and, in any case, contradicted what Mesterton and Nilsson told him after they visited Pasternak during the summer.

  The academy vote for Pasternak was unanimous. But in a nod to political sensitivities in Moscow, the citation that was agreed to did not mention Doctor Zhivago. The final language naming Pasternak said: “For his notable achievement in both contemporary poetry and the field of the great Russian narrative tradition.” But Doctor Zhivago was singled out in Österling’s official remarks: “It is indeed a great achievement to have been able to complete under difficult circumstance a work of such dignity, high above all political party frontiers and rather apolitical in its entirely human outlook.”

  At 3:20 p.m. on October 23, 1958, Österling entered the sitting room of the Nobel Library in Stockholm and announced to the waiting press: “It’s Pasternak.”

  Chapter 11

  “There would be no mercy, that was
clear.”

  Wearing an overcoat and his old cap, Pasternak was walking in driving rain in the woods near his dacha on the afternoon of October 23 when a group of journalists who had come out from Moscow found him. The newsmen asked for his reaction to Österling’s announcement, and his pleasure was obvious. “To receive this prize fills me with great joy, and also gives me great moral support. But my joy today is a lonely joy.” He told the reporters there was little more he could say as he had yet to get any official notification of the Swedish Academy’s decision. He seemed flushed and agitated. Pasternak told the correspondents that he did his best thinking while walking, and he needed to walk some more.

  Pasternak got further confirmation that the prize was his when Zinaida came home from Moscow, where she and Nina Tabidze had been shopping. They had run into a friend of Tabidze’s in the city who told them she had heard about the prize on the radio. Zinaida was shocked and upset, fearing a scandal.

  That night, at around 11:00, Pasternak’s neighbor, Tamara Ivanova, received a phone call from Maria Tikhonova, the wife of the secretary of the writers’ union, who told her that Pasternak had won the prize. Ivanova was thrilled. Tikhonova, aware of the unease in official circles, said it was too early to get excited, but said Ivanova should alert Pasternak, who didn’t have a phone. Ivanova roused her husband, Vsevolod, who got up and put on a housecoat and a winter coat over his pajamas, and the two of them padded over to Pasternak’s house. Nina Tabidze let them in and a delighted Pasternak emerged from his study. While Tabidze opened some wine, Tamara Ivanova went to Zinaida’s bedroom to tell her the news. Pasternak’s wife refused to get up. She said she didn’t expect anything good would come of the prize.

  The first official Soviet reaction was muted and condescending. Nikolai Mikhailov, the Soviet minister of culture, said he was surprised by the award. “I know Pasternak as a true poet and excellent translator, but why should he get the prize now, dozens of years after his best poems were published?” He told a Swedish correspondent in Moscow that it would be up to the writers’ union to decide if Pasternak would be allowed to receive the prize.

  The Ivanovs got another call the following morning, Friday the twenty-fourth. They were told to tell Konstantin Fedin, Pasternak’s other next-door neighbor, that Polikarpov was on his way out from Moscow. The Central Committee had earlier decided that Fedin had some influence with Pasternak and he should relay the Kremlin’s decision that he must refuse the Nobel Prize. Polikarpov came directly to Fedin’s house, gave him his instructions, and told him he would wait for him to return with Pasternak’s response. From their window, the Ivanovs watched Fedin hurry up the path to Pasternak’s door. When Fedin came in, Zinaida was baking. It was her name day, and her mood had improved over the previous night; she was now considering what she might wear in Stockholm at the awards ceremony. But Fedin ignored her and went directly up to Pasternak’s study. He told Pasternak it was an official, not a friendly, call. “I’m not going to congratulate you because Polikarpov is at my place and he’s demanding that you renounce the prize.”

  “Under no circumstances,” said Pasternak.

  They argued loudly for a few more minutes, and a report to the Kremlin stated that Pasternak was very aggressive and “even said, ‘They can do whatever they want with me.’ ” Pasternak finally asked for some time to think things over, and Fedin gave him two hours. Polikarpov, infuriated by the delay, returned to Moscow. Fedin sent a message to Polikarpov later to say that Pasternak never showed up with an answer. “That should be understood as his refusal to make a statement,” Polikarpov told his superiors.

  After Fedin left, Pasternak walked over to Vsevolod Ivanov’s house to talk about Fedin’s ultimatum. He appeared hurt and offended by the visit.

  “Do what seems right to you; don’t listen to anyone,” his neighbor told him. “I told you yesterday and I say it again today: You’re the best poet of the era. You deserve any prize.”

  “In that case I will send a telegram of thanks,” Pasternak declared.

  “Good for you!”

  Kornei Chukovsky heard about the award from his secretary, who was “jumping for joy.” Chukovsky grabbed his granddaughter Yelena and rushed over to congratulate Pasternak. “He was happy, thrilled with his conquest,” Chukovsky recalled. “I threw my arms around him and smothered him with kisses.” Chukovsky proposed a toast, a moment that was captured by some of the Western and Russian photographers who had already arrived at the dacha. (Fearful that his embrace of Pasternak could compromise him, Chukovsky, the victim of an earlier slander campaign that traumatized him, later prepared a note for the authorities explaining that he was “unaware that Doctor Zhivago contained attacks on the Soviet system.”)

  Pasternak showed Chukovsky some of the telegrams he had received—all from abroad. Several times, Zinaida said aloud that the Nobel Prize was not political and not for Doctor Zhivago, as if she could wish away her sense of danger. She also worried that she would not be allowed to travel to Sweden and whispered quietly to Chukovsky: “Kornei Ivanovich, what do you think? … After all, they have to invite the wife too.”

  When the photographers left, Pasternak went up to his study to compose a telegram for the Swedish Academy. Later in the afternoon, he sent it: “Immensely grateful, touched, proud, astonished, abashed. Pasternak.”

  When he was finished writing, he walked for a short while with Chukovsky and his granddaughter. He told them he wouldn’t be taking Zinaida to Stockholm.

  After leaving Pasternak, Chukovsky called on Fedin, who told him, “Pasternak will do us all great harm with all of this. They’ll launch a fierce campaign against the intelligentsia now.” In fact, Chukovsky was soon served with a notice to attend an emergency meeting of the writers’ union the following day. A courier was going house to house in Peredelkino with summonses for the writers in the village—each understood the public indictment that was to come and felt again Stalin’s shadow. After Vsevolod Ivanov received his notification, he collapsed and his housekeeper found him lying on the floor. He was diagnosed with a possible stroke and was bedridden for a month.

  When the courier arrived at Pasternak’s house, the writer’s “face grew dark; he clutched at his heart and could barely climb the stairs to his room.” He began to experience pain in his arm which felt as if it “had been amputated.”

  “There would be no mercy, that was clear,” Chukovsky wrote in his diary. “They were out to pillory him. They would trample him to death just as they had Zoshchenko, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky, Mirsky and Benedikt Livshits.”

  Chukovsky proposed that Pasternak go see Yekaterina Furtseva, the only woman in the Politburo, and tell her that the novel had been taken to Italy against his wishes and that he was upset by all the “hullabaloo surrounding his name.” Pasternak asked Tamara Ivanova whether he should write a letter to Furtseva. His neighbor thought it was a good idea. “Well, because, after all, she is a woman.”

  Dear Yekaterina Alekseyevna,

  It always appeared to me that Soviet man can be something other than they want to let me believe, more alive, open to debate, free and daring. I do not want to abandon that idea and I am prepared to pay any price to stay true to it. I thought the joy of receiving the Nobel Prize would not be mine alone, but would be shared with the society which I am part of. I think the honor is granted not only to me, but to the literature to which I belong, Soviet literature, and to which, with my hand on my heart, I have contributed a thing or two.

  However great my differences with these times may be, I would not want them to be settled with an axe. Well then, if it seems right to you, I am willing to endure and accept everything. But I would not want that willingness to look like a provocation or impudence. Quite the contrary, it is an obligation of humility. I believe in the presence of higher forces on earth and in life, and heaven forbids me to be proud and presumptuous.

  B. Pasternak.

  When he read it, Chukovsky was dismayed by the references to God and the
heavens, and fled Pasternak’s house in despair.

  At some point in the afternoon, Pasternak also visited Ivinskaya at the “Little House.” He probably brought over the letter to Furtseva, which was never sent and was found much later among Ivinskaya’s papers. Like Chukovsky, she would have realized that this was not the act of contrition the authorities were looking for. Pasternak also told her about the telegram he had sent to Stockholm and was in an agitated state, turning over what Fedin had demanded. “What do you think, can I say I repudiate the novel?” He didn’t really want an answer. Ivinskaya felt he was having a prolonged dialogue with himself.

  The Kremlin regarded the reaction in the West to the award as entirely predictable. The despised Radio Liberation announced that it would immediately begin broadcasting the text of Doctor Zhivago; it was ultimately directed not to by the CIA for copyright reasons. In the American and European press, Pasternak was celebrated as a nonconformist facing down an oppressive system. In an official response to Österling, the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted his remarks about Doctor Zhivago and wrote: “You and those who made this decision focused not on the novel’s literary or artistic qualities, and this is clear since it does not have any, but on its political aspects since Pasternak’s novel presents Soviet reality in a perverted way, libels the socialist revolution, socialism and the Soviet people.” The ministry accused the academy of wanting to intensify the Cold War and international tension.