The novel that was eventually called Doctor Zhivago (the initial title was The Burning Candle) ran counter to the principles of Soviet literature.

Upon completing it in January 1956, Pasternak started to wonder what to do next. It took him 20 years to resolve the enigma.īoris Pasternak started writing his legendary novel soon after the end of World War II, in 1946. It was solely owing to the persistence of philologist Ivan Tolstoy (from the famous Tolstoy family) that the secret was revealed and made public. Until recently, this detective story was couched in a thick veil of secrecy. His genius was simply used as a powerful weapon in the Cold War between the East and the West. Needless to say, Pasternak himself had nothing to do with intelligence. The CIA printed the first Russian edition of Doctor Zhivago, without which Pasternak’s nomination would not have been discussed, because the Nobel Committee only reviews fiction in the original. It transpired that the CIA made a contribution to the award. The story of the Pasternak award was crowned with quite a sensation. Now that the archives have been declassified, the circumstances of the loudest scandal in the history of Nobel Prizes will be scrutinised, at last. That year, the Academy awarded a Nobel Prize in literature to Soviet poet Boris Pasternak. This is a notable date for Russian culture.

Thus, the documents of October 1958 may be declassified in January of this year. Under the rules of the Swedish Academy, the archives of the Nobel Prize may be opened 50 years after the award takes place. Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), novelist and poet, 1958 Nobel Prize laureate in literature for his novel Doctor Zhivago, author of the influential poetry collection My Sister Life (1917), which is considered the most important poetry anthology in Russian in the 20 th century

Doctor zhivago 1958