A review by margaret_j_c
The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA, and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book, by Peter Finn
5.0
This book was gripping. It brought me to tears.
It has been said that when people do not understand something they grow angry at the object of their confusion and do everything in their power to destroy it. No other motive would explain the Kremlin's brutal and relentless bullying of Boris Pasternak for his novel, Doctor Zhivago. He was even forced to turn down a Nobel Prize due to pressure from his government. In the words of the Moroccan newspaper al-Alam, no matter what charges the Soviet Union would ever disseminate, "it would never be able to deny its suppression of Pasternak."
It must be admitted that Pasternak was a bit of a fatalist. He had an unshakable belief in his own gift and refused to waver from the novel's unapologetic message of freedom and his own disillusionment with the Soviet goal. He endured much pain and suffering and allowed it to be inflicted on others, accepting it as necessary to the process of dropping a bombshell of truth on an unenlightened society. He was right. The impact Yuri Zhivago had on the weary lives of citizens behind the Iron Curtain is immeasurable.
The words of an unknown man at the author's funeral still ring true: "Thank you in the name of the working man. We waited for your book."
Pasternak's perspective can be summed up in a few short lines from the end of one of his most famous poems, Hamlet:
Yet the order of the acts is planned
And the end of the way inescapable
I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.
To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it."
-Boris Pasternak
It has been said that when people do not understand something they grow angry at the object of their confusion and do everything in their power to destroy it. No other motive would explain the Kremlin's brutal and relentless bullying of Boris Pasternak for his novel, Doctor Zhivago. He was even forced to turn down a Nobel Prize due to pressure from his government. In the words of the Moroccan newspaper al-Alam, no matter what charges the Soviet Union would ever disseminate, "it would never be able to deny its suppression of Pasternak."
It must be admitted that Pasternak was a bit of a fatalist. He had an unshakable belief in his own gift and refused to waver from the novel's unapologetic message of freedom and his own disillusionment with the Soviet goal. He endured much pain and suffering and allowed it to be inflicted on others, accepting it as necessary to the process of dropping a bombshell of truth on an unenlightened society. He was right. The impact Yuri Zhivago had on the weary lives of citizens behind the Iron Curtain is immeasurable.
The words of an unknown man at the author's funeral still ring true: "Thank you in the name of the working man. We waited for your book."
Pasternak's perspective can be summed up in a few short lines from the end of one of his most famous poems, Hamlet:
Yet the order of the acts is planned
And the end of the way inescapable
I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees' hypocrisy.
To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it."
-Boris Pasternak