The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and a Forbidden Book
Page 35
She recalled in her diary: Lydia Chukovskaya, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, vol. 2, 311.
Chukovsky had recently set up the translators’ section: Dmitri Chukovsky, interview by Finn and Couvée, in Moscow, May 2012.
a long, formal resolution stated: Tass, October 28, 1958. See full resolution in Conquest, Courage of Genius, Appendix IV, 173–75.
“Good day to you, microphone”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 233.
she expected to hear someone shout stop: Lydia Chukovskaya, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, vol. 2, 316–19.
“I cannot stand this business anymore”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 233–36.
“willing to write any letter”: Fedin, letter to Polikarpov, October 28, 1958, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 160.
“Of course, they won’t harm you”: Yevgeni Pasternak, “Poslednie gody” (The last years), in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 684.
It was only the third time: “Three Rejections of Nobel Prizes Preceded Pasternak’s,” The New York Times, October 31, 1958.
“I made the decision quite alone”: Conquest, Courage of Genius, 93.
“My father was unrecognizable”: Yevgeni Pasternak, Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years, 237.
“silly ideas into his head”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 236.
“This is an even dirtier provocation”: “Judgment on Pasternak: The All-Moscow Meeting of Writers, Oct. 31,1958, Stenographic Report,” Survey (July 1966): 134–63.
Chapter 12
“We’ll find a place where it fits”: Semichastny, Bespokoynoe serdtse, 72–74.
before twelve thousand young people: Max Frankel, “Young Communist Head Insists Writer Go to ‘Capitalist Paradise,’ ” The New York Times, October 30, 1958.
“As the Russian proverb goes”: Komsomol’skaya Pravda, October 30, 1958. For the full passage on Boris Pasternak, see Conquest, Courage of Genius, Appendix V, 176–77.
“Not in my life”: Zinaida Pasternak, Vospominaniya, in Boris Pasternak, Vtoroe Rozhdenie, 372–73.
“I must have the work-a-day life”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 238.
“What are we to do?”: Ibid.
the house in Peredelkino would be sacked: Ibid., 240.
a group of local thugs: Gladkov, Meetings with Pasternak, 168.
After Semichastny’s speech: British Embassy in Moscow to the Foreign Office, confidential memo, December 8, 1958, in Nobel Prize for Boris Pasternak Classmark FO 371/135422, National Archives, London.
a letter couldn’t hurt: Yemelyanova, Pasternak i Ivinskaya: provoda pod tokom, 212.
“with whom will I be expelled”: Vyacheslav Ivanov, Zvezda, 2 (2010): 120.
“Who is it from”: Yemelyanova, Legendy Potapovskogo pereulka (Legends of Potapov Street), 136–37.
“He sent the manuscript to the Italian publisher”: “Judgment on Pasternak: The All-Moscow Meeting of Writers, October 31, 1958, Stenographic Report,” Survey (July 1966): 134–63.
“to imitate Pasternak’s way of talking”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 260.
“Don’t worry”: Ibid., 261.
“young literature”: Vyacheslav Ivanov, Zvezda, 2 (2010): 119.
“That I spoke against Pasternak”: Lipkin, Kvadriga, 510–11.
“Let’s agree that all of us”: Vladimir Soloukhin, “Time to Settle Accounts,” Sovetskaya Kul’tura (Soviet Culture), October 6, 1988.
“for 30 years, this sin of yours”: Yevgeny Yevtushenko, “Execution by One’s Own Conscience,” Sovetskaya Kul’tura (Soviet Culture), October 13, 1988.
“particularly vile”: Kornei Chukovsky, Dnevnik, entry January 14, 1967, 518.
“dacha-dweller of genius”: De Mallac, Boris Pasternak, 161.
“always remain in Russian poetry”: Ibid., 130.
“he approached Konstantin Paustovsky”: Chukovsky, Dnevnik, entry December 6, 1965.
“Not true! Not unanimously!”: Konstantin Vanshenkin, “Kak isklyuchali Pasternaka” (How Pasternak was expelled), in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 11, 747.
“In the fury, venom and intensity”: “Pasternak and the Pygmies,” The New York Times, October 27, 1958.
“an intellectual Budapest”: “Pasternak Fate Studied,” The Washington Post, November 3, 1958.
Three members of the Swedish Academy: British embassy in Stockholm to the Foreign Office, confidential memorandum, Nobel Prize for Boris Pasternak Classmark FO 371/135422, National Archives, London.
Western correspondents were invited: Max Frankel, “Young Communist Head Insists Writer Go to ‘Capitalist Paradise,’ ” The New York Times, October 30, 1958.
“the recognition by the Swedish Academy”: Pravda, October 29, 1958. See Conquest, Courage of Genius, 81.
Feltrinelli was in Hamburg: Carlo Feltrinelli and Inge Schönthal-Feltrinelli, interview by Finn and Couvée, in Milan, June 2, 2012.
“We are profoundly anxious”: Conquest, Courage of Genius, 97.
“I want to create for him the conditions”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 276.
“That is fantastic”: Kurt Wolff, letter to Boris Pasternak, October 25, 1958, in Wolff, A Portrait in Essays and Letters, 180.
“You have moved beyond”: Kurt Wolff, letter to Boris Pasternak, December 14, 1958, in ibid., 181.
“The system of international communism”: Associated Press, October 29, 1958.
“the communists’ treatment of Pasternak”: Notes from Meeting, November 4, 1958, Albert Washburn Papers, box 16. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
should give “maximum factual play” to the Nobel: CIA, Classified Message from the Director, October 24, 1958.
“Reactions of revulsion and shock”: CIA, Memorandum for Director of Central Intelligence, October 30, 1958.
“considerable discussion”: CIA, Memorandum for the Record, November 5, 1958.
should be used to “sparkplug” anti-Soviet coverage: CIA, Classified Message to the Director, October 28, 1958.
“free thought and dialectical materialism”: CIA, Current Intelligence Weekly Review, November 6, 1958.
Jorge Amado said the expulsion: Conquest, Courage of Genius, 99.
The Brazilian paper Última Hora: CIA, Current Intelligence Weekly Review, November 6, 1958.
“As a friend of your magnificent land”: Sean O’Casey, letter to O. Prudkov, November 7, 1958, in O’Casey, The Letters of Sean O’Casey, vol. 3, 645.
The Icelandic novelist Halldór Laxness: British embassy in Reykjavik, memo to Foreign Office, October 31, 1958, Nobel Prize for Boris Pasternak. Classmark FO 371/135422, National Archives, London.
“Iceland?”: Associated Press, May 31, 1959.
pained by the daily abuse: “Nehru Regrets Soviet Stand,” The New York Times. November 8, 1958.
“A noted writer”: Conquest, Courage of Genius, 100.
The Soviet Union’s cultural diplomacy: CIA, Current Intelligence Weekly Review, November 6, 1958.
“Enough. He’s admitted his mistakes”: Sergei Khrushchev, Khrushchev on Khrushchev, 209.
“Olga Vsevolodovna, my dear”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 262. (The interactions with Polikarpov and his meeting with Boris Pasternak on October 31 are all from Ivinskaya, 262–68, unless there is another citation.)
he broke down and wept: Maslenikova, Portret Borisa Pasternaka, 118.
Chapter 13
“Rage and Indignation”: “Gnev i vozmushchenie. Sovetskie lyudi osuzhdayut deistviya B. Pasternaka” (Rage and Indignation: Soviet People Condemn B. Pasternak’s Behavior), Literaturnaya Gazeta, November 1, 1958.
“a wench from the editorial board”: Lydia Chukovskaya, Zapiski ob Anne Akhmatovoi, vol. 2, 331.
The newspaper was indeed inundated: Kozlov, The Readers of Novyi Mir, 116.
“The revolution remained central”: Ibid., 125.
“There was also substantial evidence”: Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive, 156.
the editors of Novy Mir forwarded letters: Kozlo
v, The Readers of Novyi Mir, 126.
“To Pasternak from Judas”: Reference in Boris Pasternak, letter to O. Goncharyov, February 18, 1959, in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 10, 430.
The German journalist Gerd Ruge: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 275.
“The great and undeserved happiness”: Boris Pasternak, letter to N. B. Sologub, July 29, 1959, in Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 10, 509.
He stayed up until two: Zinaida Pasternak, Vospominaniya, in Boris Pasternak, Vtoroe Rozhdenie, 375.
“I’m troubled by the volume of it”: “Boris Pasternak, The Art of Fiction No. 25,” interview by Olga Carlisle, The Paris Review 24 (1960): 61–66.
“merge into privacy”: Gladkov, Meetings with Pasternak, 171.
“It is an unspeakable grief”: Boris Pasternak, letter to George Reavy, December 10, 1959, in “Nine Letters of Boris Pasternak,” Harvard Library Bulletin 15, no. 4 (October 1967): 327.
“Didn’t the doctor have enough trouble?”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Kurt Wolff, May 12, 1959, in Lang, Boris Pasternak–Kurt Wolff, 105.
Tass reported: Reuters, November 1, 1958.
“I am going to cook for him”: UPI, November 2, 1958.
“matron of his quiet seclusion”: Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago (2010), 39.
“like a pair of professional counterfeiters”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 278.
“the scope of the political campaign”: Pravda, November 6, 1958. See Conquest, Courage of Genius, Appendix VII, 180–81.
Solzhenitsyn “writhed with shame for him”: Solzhenitsyn, The Oak and the Calf, 292.
“The story of Boris is—a battle of butterflies”: Reeder, Anna Akhmatova, 365.
“Boris spoke the whole time”: Ibid., 366.
agreed to restore his and Ivinskaya’s ability: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 278.
Feltrinelli had been depositing: Carlo Feltrinelli, Feltrinelli, 151.
both the CIA and the Kremlin speculated: CIA, Memorandum for the Record, April 2, 1959; Central Committee Memo, January 20, 1959, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 179–80.
“The fact that I am completely lacking in curiosity”: Carlo Feltrinelli, Feltrinelli, 146.
“Their desire to drown me”: D’Angelo, Delo Pasternaka, 143.
“Have I really done insufficient”: Yevgeni Pasternak, Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years, 228.
first from his housekeeper: Yemelyanova, Pasternak i Ivinskaya: provoda pod tokom, 240.
3,000 rubles: Boris Pasternak, letter to Valeria Prishvina, December 27, 1958, in note 1 to letter of December 12, 1958, Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 10, 409.
“His cheeks are sunken”: Chukovsky, Diary, entry January 7, 1959, 437.
“We must put our financial affairs”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Olga Ivinskaya, February 24, 1959, in Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, Appendix A, 378.
Ruge gathered about $8,000: Gerd Ruge, interview by Finn and Couvée, in Munich, May 29, 2012. Ruge was unable to place an exact date on the transfer, but the gathering and transfer of the money was probably in and around March 1959. In a letter to Feltrinelli on February 2, Pasternak asked his publisher to disburse cash gifts to a number of friends, translators, and family in the West. The list of beneficiaries didn’t immediately reach Feltrinelli, and Pasternak revised the list in April, adding another $5,000 to the $10,000 to be paid to Ruge. This addition, to clear the debt, was also mentioned in a March 30 letter to Jacqueline de Proyart.
He alerted his French translator: Boris Pasternak, letter to Jacqueline de Proyart, February 3, 1959, in Boris Pasternak, Lettres à mes amies françaises (1956–1960), 141.
Pasternak asked Polikarpov: Central Committee Memo, April 16, 1959, with attachments, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 251.
“It wouldn’t be so bad”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 337.
“brötchen”: Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, letter to Heinz Schewe, November 13, 1959, Heinz Schewe Papers, Nachlass Heinz Schewe, Unternehmensarchiv, Axel Springer AB, Berlin.
The average annual earnings: Barnes, Boris Pasternak, vol. 2, 364.
“To find myself bereft of your trust”: Carlo Feltrinelli, Feltrinelli, 149.
“one of the great events”: Edmund Wilson, “Doctor Life and His Guardian Angel,” The New Yorker, November 15, 1958, 213–37.
famously photographed: Photograph captioned “Sightseeing in Washington,” The New York Times, January 5, 1959.
“Suffering from delusions”: Barbara Thompson, “Locked-in Guests Dine on Steak with Mikoyan,” The Washington Post, January 6, 1959.
850,000 copies of the novel: CIA, Memorandum for the Record, April 2, 1959.
“Pasternak is so fashionable”: Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs memo, February 12, 1959, Afiani and Tomilina, in Pasternak i Vlast’, 242.
“a photomontage”: The New York Times, March 8, 1959.
“one of the most despicable books about Jews”: Haagsche Courant, February 7, 1959.
bowed so deeply before the king: “Pasternak Cited at Nobel Session,” The New York Times, December 11, 1958.
“Tempest not yet over”: Boris Pasternak, telegram to sisters, November 10, 1958, Boris Pasternak, Family Correspondence, 407.
“It would be best of all to die”: Barnes, Boris Pasternak, vol. 2, 352.
“putrid internal émigré position”: Conquest, Courage of Genius, 95.
“disoriented progressive writers”: CIA, Memo from the Chief, Soviet Russia Division, April 9, 1959.
“I realize that I can’t demand anything”: KGB memo on Pasternak, February 18, 1958.
“like so many radioactive isotopes”: Conquest, Courage of Genius, 96.
“in every generation”: “Pasternak Stands on ‘Zhivago Views,’ ” The New York Times, February 19, 1959.
“distressing, deadly dangerous”: Carlo Feltrinelli, Feltrinelli, 144. (Feltrinelli never received this letter, which was sent to Jacqueline de Proyart, who didn’t forward it.)
“What more do you need?”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 297.
I am lost like a beast in an enclosure: This is the translation that appeared in the Daily Mail on February 12, 1959. Other renderings of the poem into English are slightly different.
“I am a white cormorant”: Anthony Brown, “Pasternak on My Life Now,” Daily Mail, February 12, 1959.
“The poem should not have been published”: February 13, 1959, memo on Western media coverage of Pasternak’s birthday [February 10], in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 243.
Chapter 14
“in a cold fury”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 300.
Pasternak inscribed Gudiashvili’s scrapbook: Yevgeni Pasternak, Boris Pasternak: The Tragic Years, 240.
“I really should draw in my horns”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Olga Ivinskaya, February 22, 1959, in Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, Appendix A377.
“Olyusha, my precious girl”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Olga Ivinskaya, February 28, 1959, in Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, Appendix A 380.
Pasternak fell to his knees: Bykov, Boris Pasternak, 834.
“I don’t want to talk nonsense to you”: Boris Pasternak, letter to Chukurtma Gudiashvili, March 8, 1959, Boris Pasternak, Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, vol. 10, 439.
was pressured by the authorities: Barnes, Boris Pasternak, vol. 2, 356.
“fatal carelessness”: Report on the interrogation of B. L Pasternak, March 14, 1959, in Afiani and Tomilina, Pasternak i Vlast’, 192.
“like Tolstoy in 1903”: Isaiah Berlin, letter to Edmund Wilson, December 23, 1958, in Berlin, Enlightening, 688.
“Pasternak does not receive”: Ivinskaya, A Captive of Time, 294.
“You have to stop receiving that trash”: Zinaida Pasternak, Vospominaniya, in Boris Pasternak, Vtoroe Rozhdenie, 378.
“Journalists and others, please go away”: Conquest, Courage of Genius, page 104.
The CIA’s efforts: CIA
, Memo to Acting Chief, Soviet Russia Division, November 18, 1958; Memo to the Chief, Psychological and Paramilitary Staff, November 21, 1958; Memo to CIA Director, November 21, 1958; Dispatch from SR Chief, December 17, 1958.
“The worldwide discussion of the book”: CIA, Memo for the Record, March 27, 1959.
“It would be quite natural for an American”: CIA, Memo from the Chief, Soviet Russia Division, April 8, 1958.
“We feel that Dr. Zhivago is an excellent springboard”: CIA, Memo from the Chief, Soviet Russia Division, April 9, 1959.
“in one form or another”: CIA, Memo for the Record, March 27, 1959.
The CIA also considered publishing an anthology of Pasternak’s works: CIA, Memo for the Office of General Counsel, February 5, 1959.
to be printed on “bible-stock”: CIA, Memo from the Chief of the Soviet Russia Division, August 9, 1958.
“more easily concealed and infiltrated”: CIA, Memo for Acting Deputy Director (Plans) from the Acting Chief, SR Division, November 19, 1958.
“ballooned into East Germany”: CIA, Classified Message to the Director, November 5, 1958.
“particularly hot item”: CIA, Memo from the Chief of the Soviet Russia Division, December 17, 1959.
the Soviet Union reinstituted searches: Barghoorn, The Soviet Cultural Offensive, 119.
the novel was kept under strict KGB embargo: Yelena Makareki, former employee of the V. I. Lenin State Library’s Special Collections section, interview by Couvée, in Moscow, May 8, 2011.
The CIA had its own press in Washington: Former CIA Moscow station chief Burton Gerber, interview by Finn, in Washington, D.C., November 20, 2012.
“inside a man’s suit or trouser pocket”: CIA, Memorandum, July 16, 1959.
“In view of the security”: Memorandum for the Acting Deputy Director (Plans), November 19, 1958.
nine thousand copies of a miniature edition: CIA, Memorandum, “Publication of the Miniature Edition of Dr. Zhivago,” July 16, 1959.
Société d’Edition et d’Impression Mondiale: Copies of the book are held at the CIA museum in Langley, Virginia.
At a press conference in The Hague: November 4, 1958, editions of the newspapers Haagsche Courant and Vaderland.