Cold Open

It’s October 23rd, 1958, in Peredelkino, a small village near Moscow in the Soviet Union.

68-year-old Boris Pasternak is almost home after an evening walk through the woods. Rain pours through the canopy of pine needles above him, soaking his cap and overcoat. Pasternak doesn’t notice, though. His mind is consumed by the rumors that have been swirling since this afternoon.

As he approaches the small red cottage that he shares with his wife, Pasternak finds a gaggle of journalists waiting for him. They quickly raise their cameras and jockey for his attention.

They’ve all heard the same news, Pasternak has—that his novel Doctor Zhivago has just won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The journalists clamor to know how he is feeling, but for once, Pasternak is at a loss for words. He’s humbled his work is being recognized. It's a great honor not just for him, but for all of the Soviet Union.

Unwilling to say anything more, Pasternak shrugs off the journalists and enters his cottage. It’s quiet inside. Because since she heard the news, his wife Zinaida has locked herself in their bedroom and refuses to come out. Unlike Pasternak, she knows exactly how she feels about the Nobel Prize and has told him as much. She’s convinced it will bring nothing but death and despair into their lives.

Pasternak pours himself a glass of wine. Because he knows his wife has a point. After all, Doctor Zhivago has been banned by the authorities for its supposedly negative portrayal of the Soviet regime. But as far as Pasternak is concerned, his book is not about politics at all. It’s about what Pasternak always says of the most important things in life: land and sky, passion and creative spirit. As he takes a sip of his wine, Pasternak hopes Zinaida is wrong, that the Nobel Prize will cause the authorities to think again. Because Pasternak loves his country. And he wants the Soviet people to know it.

Despite his optimism, Boris Pasternak will not become the pride of the Soviet Union. Instead, he will become such a pariah that he will find it impossible to accept his prize. But readers all over the world will continue to find meaning in the pages of his epic book, and one day, long after his own death, Pasternak will finally receive the accolade he was awarded on October 23rd, 1958.

Introduction

From Noiser and Airship, I’m Lindsay Graham, and this is History Daily.

History is made every day. On this podcast—every day—we tell the true stories of the people and events that shaped our world.

Today is October 23rd, 1958: Boris Pasternak Wins The Nobel Prize.

Act One: Boris Pasternak’s Big Act of Rebellion

It’s the afternoon of June 23rd, 1934, in Moscow, 24 years before Boris Pasternak is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The weather outside is glorious, but as usual, Pasternak is cooped up in his study, writing. Pasternak earns a living as a translator, but his true love is poetry.

He's deeply engaged in composing his latest, but just as he lands on the perfect word to end a stanza, the telephone rings. An unfamiliar voice is on the other end. The man introduces himself as the secretary to Joseph Stalin, the fearsome Soviet Premier. For a moment, Pasternak is confused and wonders if this might be a joke. But then, the secretary tells him that Comrade Stalin wants to speak with him directly and starts reciting a number for him to call. Pasternak feels the color drain from his face are scrambles to write it down.

Because if Stalin wants to speak with him, it can’t be good. In the last few years, as Stalin has consolidated power in the Soviet Union, Russians have had to conform to his ideology—or risk serious consequences. Many writers have been accused of anti-Soviet rhetoric and been thrown into gulags. And just last month, Pasternak’s friend Osip Mandelstam was arrested for a poem he had written mocking Stalin. Mandelstam was taken to KGB headquarters, where he is likely being tortured at this very moment. So, as Pasternak’s trembling fingers dial the number he was given, he prays that he is not doomed to the same fate.

After the telephone rings a few times, Stalin’s unmistakable rasping voice slithers down the line. To Pasternak’s surprise, though, it is Mandelstam that Stalin wants to discuss. He demands to know whether Pasternak thinks that Mandelstam is a good poet. And of course, Pasternak does. He thinks he’s a brilliant poet. But Pasternak also knows that this is a loaded question, and he decides it’s better not to answer too directly. So, Pasternak tells Stalin that he and Mandelstam are very different kinds of poets. Then, he tries to steer the conversation toward literature and philosophy. But Stalin doesn’t take the bait. Instead, he chastises Pasternak for not standing up for his friend and abruptly hangs up the phone.

Pasternak takes a shaky breath. He hopes he hasn’t betrayed Mandelstam, but he was scared. With a leader as paranoid and power-hungry as Stalin, the slightest misstep can be disastrous.

And indeed, over the next few years, Stalin’s Great Purge will leave 750,000 politicians, intellectuals, and artists dead or imprisoned.

But despite the danger, Pasternak doesn't abandon literature. Instead, he is inspired by the great Russian novelists Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, and he sets his sights on completing an epic of his own.

It will tell the story of Russia over the past fifty years through the eyes of a young doctor named Yuri Zhivago.

But work on the novel is slow until 1946, when Pasternak falls head over heels in love. Olga Ivinskaya doesn’t just become his mistress, but also his muse. She provides the model for the heroine of Doctor Zhivago and gives Pasternak the motivation he needs to finish his book.

But rumors about the contents of Pasternak’s novel start to attract the attention of the Kremlin. In 1949, the KGB arrests Olga and takes her in for questioning. And though she is six months pregnant, agents torture her for days. When she refuses to give up any information about Pasternak’s manuscript, they ship her off to a labor camp. Her unborn baby does not survive.

Losing Olga and their child breaks Pasternak’s heart, but not his spirit. In 1955, decades after he started, Pasternak finally finishes Doctor Zhivago.

But no one in the Soviet Union dares to publish it. The manuscript languishes in a drawer for a year, until Pasternak meets an Italian publishing scout with a radical idea.

Sergio D’Angelo proposes smuggling Pasternak’s manuscript out of the Soviet Union and publishing it in Europe. Pasternak reluctantly agrees. It kills him to think that his countrymen won’t be the first to read the book. But now at least someone will have the opportunity to hear his story. Meeting at his cottage in the countryside, he hands Sergio a large package delicately wrapped in brown paper and twine.

As they walk to the garden gate, Sergio looks Pasternak in the eyes and promises he will do everything he can to keep the manuscript safe and see it published on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Sergio will be true to his word. Doctor Zhivago will be published, and it will be so widely acclaimed that it will gain one very unusual fan: the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Act Two: The CIA Makes Dr. Zhivago a Hit

It’s September 9th, 1958, at the World’s Fair in Brussels, Belgium, three years after Boris Pasternak finished Doctor Zhivago.

Irina Posnova winds her way through the crowds. The vast fair site is a vision of the future, with modernist buildings, roaring fountains, and aerial trams. But nothing quite matches Irina’s home country’s pavilion: the Soviet Union has spent $50 million on a massive, glass-encased hall complete with a 50-foot bronze statue of Lenin, ballet dancers, and replicas of the Sputnik satellite.

But as Irina passes by this colossus, she scowls. Of course, nowhere in the 500-foot-long building is there any acknowledgment of how the Soviet Union has tried to stamp out religion and ostracize Christians like her. So to fight back, Irina has been smuggling religious texts across the Iron Curtain for years. But today, she will be helping disseminate a different text, one that feels even more taboo than the Bible: Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. 

It’s been two years since Pasternak gave the book to an Italian publishing scout. And as promised, Sergio D’Angelo successfully smuggled the manuscript across the Soviet border, and once in Italy, had it translated into over a dozen languages.

Pasternak’s novel is now widely praised in the West. But it was a different story in the Soviet Union. There, authorities denounced the novel, saying it “casts doubt on the validity of the Bolshevik Revolution.” But Soviet readers have never had the chance to judge the novel for themselves—until now.

Irina turns and almost runs headlong into a statue of the Pope Pius XII outside the Vatican Pavilion. Then, passing under the statue’s outstretched arms, she walks through the building to the very back, where a red velvet curtain hides the entrance to a small library. This is the room that has become the unlikely headquarters for a Cold War espionage mission.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency, or CIA, believes Doctor Zhivago could be a powerful piece of anti-Soviet propaganda. They’ve already printed copies of it in Russian, but now they need to get them across the border. And the World's Fair is the perfect opportunity. It’s one of the few foreign events that Soviet citizens are allowed to attend. So, with the help of allies at the Vatican, the CIA is distributing 365 copies of the book to volunteers who will carry them back across the Soviet border.

Irina pulls back the curtain of the library and sees one of her associates pressing a copy of Doctor Zhivago into the palm of a Soviet tourist. The tourist looks up, his eyes wide in terror, thinking he's been caught, but Irina puts him at ease. She is not by the KGB minders who are roaming the fair. Irina then takes the book from his hands and tears off the cover. Handing back just the pages, she advises him that it is easier to hide a book in pieces. Nodding in understanding, the tourist rips the rest into chunks and stuffs them into his waistband and socks. Then, he hurries back out into the fair of an anonymous crowd.

Irina’s eyes drift down to the torn book cover in her hand and the name emblazoned on the front. It was one thing for Boris Pasternak's book to be published abroad, but Irina can’t help wondering what will happen to Boris when the Kremlin finds out that Russians are reading it as well.

And it doesn’t take long for the Soviet authorities to discover that the book is circulating behind the Iron Curtain. And their fury deepens in late October 1958, when news breaks that the Swedes have awarded Pasternak the Nobel Prize in Literature. In Moscow, the new Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev expects Pasternak to immediately denounce the award. But he doesn’t.

Khrushchev has Pasternak harassed by the KGB, kicked out of the Translators’ Union, and denounced by fellow writers as a “weed” or a “Judas.” But Pasternak still doesn’t reject the prize.

So pacing in his office, Khrushchev contemplates his next move. His predecessor Josef Stalin would have just sent Pasternak to the gulags, but Khrushchev has a reputation to keep—he’s carved out an image as a more sophisticated political operator. Overt shows of force seem thuggish and beneath him. So, he has to find another way.

So, he sits down at his large oak desk and reaches for the telephone. Dialing an aide. Khrushchev tells him to arrange a meeting with Vladimir Semichastny. At just 34, Semichastny is already favorite to become the next head of the KGB, and he’s slated to give a televised speech tomorrow. It’s supposed to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the youth wing of the Communist Party, but Khrushchev thinks there’s room for a few minutes on literature as well.

After hanging up the phone, Khrushchev picks up a pen and starts drafting some lines: “As they say, by a Russian proverb: even in a good flock a lousy sheep arises…Pasternak, this man who considers himself amongst the best representatives of society, has fouled the spot where he ate and cast filth on those by whose labor he lives and breathes. Why shouldn't he breathe the capitalist air which he so yearned for in his book?”

Khrushchev finishes his note, then sits back, pleased with himself. Pasternak might be able to dazzle with his poems and literature, but the Soviet premier knows how to communicate a threat.

The next day, Pasternak will listen to Semichastny’s speech and hear the implied threat of exile. At the urging of his family, he will finally renounce the Nobel Prize, becoming the first person ever to reject the award. But the Nobel committee will not forget Boris Pasternak. And eventually the time will come when the walls between East and West will fall, and Boris Pasternak will finally be awarded the prize he deserves.

Act Three: Boris, Remembered

It’s December 9th, 1989, in Stockholm, Sweden, 31 years after Boris Pasternak rejected the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Sitting beneath the glittering chandeliers of the grand hall, Yevgeny Pasternak tries to control his emotions. At the front of the room, a man from the Swedish Academy is delivering a glowing speech about Yevgeny’s father and his masterpiece, Doctor Zhivago. For Yevgeny, this is a fitting end to a family tragedy. At the age of 66, he has come to Sweden to finally accept the Nobel Prize on his father’s behalf.

By now, Boris Pasternak has been dead for over 29 years. Following the controversy over the Nobel Prize, his health rapidly declined, and he died in 1960 at the age of 70. The Kremlin tried to keep his death quiet, allowing just a small notice in the Literary Gazette. But the authorities couldn’t stop the word from spreading. Handwritten notices appeared all over the Moscow subway system, and when the day of Pasternak’s funeral arrived, thousands of people showed up. So too did the KGB. Their agents prowled through the crowds, taking photographs of the attendees. But the mourners refused to be intimidated. And even when the funeral ended, they stayed and stood together, defiantly reciting Pasternak’s greatest poems.

That outpouring of admiration and grief did nothing to change the government’s policy, though. Doctor Zhivago remained banned, and for most of Yevgeny’s life, his father was treated as a pariah by the state. It’s only now, following a series of liberalizing reforms in the Soviet Union, that the authorities have allowed Doctor Zhivago to be published. And that makes Yevgeny very happy. Right now, all over the Soviet Union, people are reading and enjoying his father's book.

The representative from the Swedish academy finishes his speech and calls Yevgeny up to stage to receive the medallion and diploma that should have been his father’s. As he rises from his seat, applause fills the room, and Yevgeny remembers the words of one of his father’s final poems. Reflecting on his disgrace, he wrote:

Even in my dying hour
I believe it's stronger still:
Malice will be overpowered
By the spirit of goodwill. 

And at long last, goodwill has triumphed, and Boris Pasternak has the award he’s been owed for more than thirty years, ever since he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on October 23rd, 1958.

Outro

Next on History Daily, October 24th, 1917. During World War One, Italy suffers a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Caporetto.

From Noiser and Airship, this is History Daily, hosted, edited, and executive produced by me, Lindsay Graham.

Audio editing by Muhammad Shahzaib.

Sound design by Mollie Baack

This episode is written and researched by Hazel May Bryan.

Edited by William Simpson.

Managing producer Emily Burke.

Executive Producers are William Simpson for Airship and Pascal Hughes for Noiser.