by Peter Finn
The three men spoke for twenty minutes: Peter de Ridder, interview by Couvée in Lisse, the Netherlands, October 2008.
he told a newspaper reporter: Peter de Ridder, “Geheimzinnige uitgave van Pasternak. Door Russen verbannen roman in Nederland—clandestien?—gedrukt?” (Mysterious Edition of Pasternak. Novel Banned by Russians in the Netherlands—Secretly?—Printed?), Haagsche Post, October 4, 1958, 5–6.
“I felt the book needed to be published”: Peter de Ridder, interviews in Lisse, the Netherlands, by Couvée on August 13, 1997, and by Finn and Couvée on July 29, 2008.
In the first week of September: CIA, Memorandum for PP Notes, “Publication of Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago,” September 8, 1958.
The books, wrapped up in brown paper: Rachel van der Wilden, widow of Joop van der Wilden and herself a former MI6 officer, interview by Couvée in The Hague, August 16, 2012. Joop van der Wilden kept one of the books, still wrapped in brown paper and dated September 6. Rachel van der Wilden still has this copy. The CIA memo above of November 25, 1958, also states that the novel was printed in “early September.”
Two hundred copies were sent to headquarters: CIA, Memorandum for Chief, PRD, “Distribution of Russian Copies of Dr. Zhivago,” October 31, 1958.
Sputnik satellites, rows of agricultural machinery: For descriptions of the Expo, see The New York Times, April 27, 1958, and May 11, 1958; The Washington Post, May 25, 26, and 27, 1958.
“Socialist economic principles will guarantee”: Pluvinge, Expo 58: Between Utopia and Reality, 93.
“from what we know about Soviet plans”: Rydell, World of Fairs, 200.
“heavy, belabored and fatiguing propaganda”: Ibid., 197.
he chose Abraham Lincoln: Tour guide Betty Rose to William Buell, office memorandum, Travel by Soviet Officials to Belgium, RG 59, 1955–59, 033.6155, National Archives, College Park, MD.; “2 Red Leaders Visit U.S. Pavilion at Fair,” The Washington Post, July 5, 1958.
“These are all lies”: Boris Agapov, “Poezdka v Bryussel’ ” (A Trip to Brussels), Novy Mir (January 1959): 162.
“the leading, privileged classes”: Joos, Deelneming van de H. Stoel aan de algemene Wereldtentoonstelling van Brussel 1958, 627.
provided one of the few accounts of how Soviet visitors were greeted: Boris Agapov, “Poezdka v Bryussel’ ” (A Trip to Brussels), Novy Mir (January 1959): 155–59.
“Is it true that Doctor Zhivago appeared in the original?”: Kozovoi, Poet v katastrofe, 250.
“This phase can be considered”: CIA, Memorandum for the Record, “Status of AEDINOSAUR as of 9 September 1958,” September 9, 1958.
“In appreciation of your courage”: Rachel van der Wilden, who has the inscribed copy of Doctor Zhivago, interview by Couvée in The Hague, August 16, 2012.
“I have just seen”: Mancosu, Inside the Zhivago Story, 131–36.
Der Spiegel in Germany followed up: Der Spiegel, October 29, 1958, 63–64.
Pasternak apparently read the Spiegel article: Boris Pasternak, letter to Valeria Prishvina, December 12, 1958, in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 10, 408.
“during the closing days of the Brussels Fair”: Lewis Nichols, “In and Out of Books,” The New York Times, November 2, 1958.
“only owing to a deplorable misunderstanding”: One such ad appeared in The New York Times Book Review, January 22, 1959, 22.
“a gift of copies of Doctor Zhivago reached our residence”: Draft of statement made by Antoine Ilc of the organization Pro Russia Cristiana, at a press conference in the Foyer Oriental Chrétien, Brussels, November 10, 1958. Life with God Papers, folder I. 6. 3, Fondazione Russia Cristiana, Seriate, Italy.
“That quaint workshop of amateur subversion”: Quincy (pseudonym), National Review Bulletin, November 15, 1958.
an “indemnity obligation” to print another five thousand: Cornelius van Schooneveld, letter to Roman Jakobson, November 11, 1958, in the C. H. van Schooneveld Collection, University of Leiden, the Netherlands.
imposed special controls: CIA, Memorandum, November 21, 1958.
“the 12 or 14 reviewers”: The New York Times, November 2, 1958.
“abounds with errata”: Carlo Feltrinelli, Feltrinelli, 155.
the Mouton edition printed for the CIA: Mancosu, Inside the Zhivago Story, 165–66; Couvée, De Parelduiker 2 [1998], 28–37.
“This is almost another text, not the one I wrote”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Jacqueline de Proyart, March 30, 1959, in Boris Pasternak, Lettres à mes amies françaises (1956–1960), 152. (Proyart eventually did edit and publish a corrected version with the University of Michigan Press.)
“It is our duty to inform you”: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, letter to the University of Michigan Press, October 8, 1958, in University of Michigan Press Papers, University of Michigan Special Collections Library, Ann Arbor, Box 1, folder entitled University of Michigan Press Pasternak Records—Dr. Zhivago—Pre-Publication Records—Copyright Negotiations.
“We would be interested to know”: Fred Wieck, letter to Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore, October 20, 1958, in University of Michigan Press Papers, University of Michigan Special Collections Papers, Ann Arbor.
“we witness the amazing spectacle”: Kurt Wolff, letter to Harlan Hatcher, November 13, 1958, in University of Michigan Press Papers, University of Michigan Special Collections Library, Ann Arbor.
“You can see, therefore, why we resent your indictment”: Harlan Hatcher, letter to Kurt Wolff, November 21, 1958, in University of Michigan Press Papers, University of Michigan Special Collections Library, Ann Arbor.
“fully worth trouble in view obvious effect on Soviets”: CIA, Cable from Director, November 5, 1958.
“Their reported price on the black market”: “From the Other Shore,” Encounter 11, no. 6 (December 1958): 94.
Chapter 10
a dozen friends: Max Frankel, interview by Finn in New York City, March 5, 2013.
“This book is the product of an incredible time”: Frankel, The Times of My Life, 169.
he wanted “more than anything”—the Nobel Prize: Blokh, Sovetskii Soyuz v Inter’ere Nobelevskikh premii, 407, note 11. The remark was made by Akhmatova in 1962 to a Swedish academic.
“You will think me immodest”: Max Frankel, “Author Hoped for Prize,” The New York Times, October 25, 1958.
“the most outstanding work of an idealistic nature”: Espmark, The Nobel Prize in Literature, 1.
“to work for the purity, vigor and majesty of the Swedish Language”: Svensén, The Swedish Academy and the Nobel Prize in Literature, 44.
214,599.40 Swedish kronor: Haagsche Courant, October 11, 1958.
described the writer as often inaccessible: Kjell Strömberg, The 1958 Prize in the Nobel Prize Library: Pasternak, page 375.
“to be placed side by side”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Olga Freidenberg, November 12, 1954, Boris Pasternak and Olga Freidenberg, Correspondence, 336.
“If, as some people think”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Lydia Pasternak Slater, December 18, 1957, in Boris Pasternak, Family Correspondence, 391.
“modeled on War and Peace”: Renato Poggioli, letter to the Swedish Academy, January 20, 1958, in Pasternak file, Archive of the Swedish Academy.
“fresh, innovative, difficult style”: Ernest Simmons, letter to the Swedish Academy, January 14, 1958, in Pasternak file, Archive of the Swedish Academy.
“In a world where great poetry”: Harry Levin, letter to the Swedish Academy, January 15, 1958, in Pasternak file, Archive of the Swedish Academy.
“A strong patriotic accent comes through”: Quoted in Kjell Strömberg, The 1958 Prize in the Nobel Prize Library: Pasternak, page 375.
The articles were translated for the Central Committee: November 1957 translations in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 101–4.
Polikarpov even suggested in one note: February 20, 1958, note of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 101–5
.
“halfway through the twentieth century”: Calvino, Why Read the Classics?, 185.
“as odd as an Aztec temple”: Victor Frank, “A Russian Hamlet,” The Dublin Review (Autumn 1958): 212.
“in an openly censored form”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Yelena Blaginina, December 16, 1957, in Yevgeni Pasternak, Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years, 230–31.
efforts “to canonize” Pasternak’s works: Literaturnaya Gazeta, November 28, 1957.
“The reviews were enthusiastic”: Pyotr Suvchinsky, letter to Boris Pasternak, January 28, 1958, in Kozovoi, Poet v katastrofe, 219–20.
“I deplore the fuss now being made about my book”: Gerd Ruge, “A Visit to Pasternak,” Encounter 10, no. 3 (March 1958): 22–25. Ruge visited Pasternak for the first time in late 1957. See also Ruge, Pasternak: A Pictorial Biography, 96–101.
“unworthy of a bed in the Kremlin Hospital”: Chukovsky, Diary, entry February 1, 1958.
“scorned by one and all”: Ibid., entry February 3, 1958.
He blew kisses: Ibid., entry February 7, 1958.
“More and more does fate carry me off”: Boris Pasternak, letter to G. V. Bebutov, May 24, 1958, in Boris Pasternak, Letters to Georgian Friends, 170.
“My first impression”: Lydia Chukovskaya, “Otryvki iz dnevnika” (Diary fragments), entry April 22, 1958, in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 433.
“he also looks the genius”: Kornei Chukovsky, Diary, entry April 22, 1958, 431.
“It is the most important novel”: Kurt Wolff, letter to Boris Pasternak, February 12, 1958, in Wolff, A Portrait in Essays and Letters, 176–77.
he burst into tears: Hingley, Pasternak, 235.
He wrote to de Proyart: Boris Pasternak, letter to Jacqueline de Proyart, July 9, 1958, in Boris Pasternak, Lettres à mes amies françaises (1956–1960), 102.
“I would be nothing without 19th century Russia”: Albert Camus, letter to Boris Pasternak, June 9, 1958, in Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne Des Slavistes 22, no. 2 (June 1980): 276–78.
“To those who are familiar with Soviet novels”: The New York Times, September 7, 1958.
“this book has come to us”: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, October 4, 1958, in Sieburg, Zur Literatur 1957–1963, 92.
“If it were written by a Russian émigré”: Orville Prescott, “Books of the Times,” The New York Times, September 5, 1958.
“In your bourgeois society”: R. H. S. Crossman, “London Diary,” New Statesman, November 29, 1958.
One writer from Vilnius: Chukovsky, Diary, entry April 22, 1958, 431.
go to Baku: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 214.
“Wanting justice to be served”: Markov to the Central Committee, note, April 7, 1958, in Afiani and Tomilina Pasternak i Vlast’, 136.
“a man of immense talent”: Werth, Russia under Khrushchev, 237.
“I would vote against Sholokhov”: Espmark, The Nobel Prize in Literature, 106–7.
The academy shortlisted three: Pasternak file, Archive of the Swedish Academy.
“impossible for the bourgeois media to make a scandal”: October 10, 1958, note for the Central Committee, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 139.
he told Österling that the prize could be awarded: Blokh, Sovetskii Soyuz v Inter’ere Nobelevskikh premii, 406–7.
Pasternak mistakenly believed: Boris Pasternak, letter to Hélène Peltier, July 30, 1958, in Boris Pasternak, Lettres à mes amies françaises (1956–1960), 111.
“no hesitation about receiving the prize”: De Mallac, Boris Pasternak, 225.
“In this era of world wars”: Nils Åke Nilsson, “Pasternak: We Are the Guests of Existence,” The Reporter, November 27, 1958.
“I wish this could happen in a year’s time”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Lydia Pasternak Slater, August 14, 1958, in Boris Pasternak, Family Correspondence, 402.
“He several times referred”: Hingley, Pasternak, 235.
“will turn the reading into a riot”: Chukovsky, Diary, entry June 14, 1958, 433.
“an anti-Soviet novel”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 219.
contradicted what Mesterton and Nilsson: Pasternak file, Archive of the Swedish Academy.
“It is indeed a great achievement”: Ibid.
Chapter 11
“To receive this prize fills me”: Max Frankel, “Soviet’s Writers Assail Pasternak,” The New York Times, October 26, 1958.
Zinaida was shocked and upset: Zinaida Pasternak, Vospominaniya, in Boris Pasternak, Vtoroe Rozhdenie, 368.
Ivanova was thrilled: Tamara Ivanova, “Boris Leonidovich Pasternak,” in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 289.
“I know Pasternak as a true poet”: UPI, October 23, 1958.
Fedin ignored her: Zinaida Pasternak, Vospominaniya, in Boris Pasternak, Vtoroe Rozhdenie, 369.
“I’m not going to congratulate you”: Kornei Chukovsky, Diary, entry October 27, 1958, 435.
“They can do whatever they want with me”: Dmitri Polikarpov, note to Mikhail Suslov, October 24, 1958, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 146–47.
“Do what seems right to you”: Tamara Ivanova, “Boris Leonidovich Pasternak,” in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 290.
He told them he wouldn’t be taking Zinaida: Yelena Chukovskaya, “Nobelevskaya premiya” (The Nobel Prize), in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 738–39.
He was diagnosed with a possible stroke: Tamara Ivanova, “Boris Leonidovich Pasternak,” in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 290–91.
“face grew dark”: Chukovsky, Diary, entry October 27, 1958, 435.
“had been amputated”: Tamara Ivanova, “Boris Leonidovich Pasternak,” in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 291–92.
“There would be no mercy”: Chukovsky, Diary, entry October 27, 1958, 435.
Pasternak asked Tamara: Tamara Ivanova, “Boris Leonidovich Pasternak,” in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 291–92.
Dear Yekaterina Alekseyevna: Boris Pasternak, letter to Yekaterina Furtseva, October 24, 1958, in ibid., vol. 10, 398.
Radio Liberation announced: UPI, October 23, 1958.
“You and those who made this decision”: October 26, 1958, instructions to the Soviet embassy in Sweden, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 147–49; Pasternak file, Archive of the Swedish Academy.
By 6:00 a.m. people were lining up: Michel Tatu, “En dépit des attaques du congrès des écrivains Russes, <
a circulation of 880,000: Kozlov, The Readers of Novyi Mir, 112.
“The internal emigrant Zhivago”: Editorial, Literaturnaya Gazeta, October 25, 1958. See Conquest, Courage of Genius, Appendix II, 136–63, for a full translation of the editorial.
Three students in Leningrad: Kozlov, The Readers of Novyi Mir, 128.
Only 110 of about 300 Literary Institute students: Yemelyanova, Legendy Potapovskogo pereulka, 106–7.
“reaching for a sack of dollars”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 224.
about forty-five writers: October 28, 1958, note for the Central Committee, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 155.
he was away at a sanitarium: Polikarpov memo, October 28, 1958, in ibid., 157.
“moral support”: Le Monde, October 26 and 27, 1958.
“Zaslavsky has acted only as a scandal monger”: Kozlov, The Readers of the Novyi Mir, 128.
Zaslavsky began his career as a provocateur: Kemp-Welsh, Stalin and the Literary Intelligentsia, 63.
“an especially sinister nuance”: Fleishman, Boris Pasternak: The Poet and his Politics, 289.
“Reactionary Propaganda Uproar”: Pravda, October 26, 1958. See Conquest, Courage of Genius, Appendix III, 164–72, for a full translat
ion of the article.
“The radio, from 5 in the morning”: Kadare, Le Crépuscule des dieux de la steppe, 138.
“Everybody listened in silence”: Gladkov, Meetings with Pasternak, 166.
“it was in fact all very painful”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 225.
“Really now”: Ibid., 226.
called Pasternak his teacher: Gladkov, Meetings with Pasternak, 167.
“I now take it on myself”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 230.
“Why? The most terrible thing is”: Vitale, Shklovsky: Witness to an Era, 29–30.
“gripped by the sickening, clammy feeling”: Gladkov, Meetings with Pasternak, 167.
“I still believe even after all this noise”: Boris Pasternak, letter to the board of the Union of Soviet Writers, October 27, 1958, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 153.
“with the cold eyes of a dutiful clerk”: Vyacheslav Ivanov, Zvezda, 2 (2010): 113.
Pasternak’s letter was read: Polikarpov report to the Central Committee, October 28, 1958, in ibid., 157.
“put a bullet through a traitor’s head”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 272.
“harsh, very direct, hostile”: Konstantin Vanshenkin, “Kak isklyuchali Pasternaka” (How Pasternak Was Expelled), in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 740–47.
