Book Tells How CIA Turned 'Doctor Zhivago' Into Propaganda Tool

• Reuters
• Apr. 07 2014 17:02
• Last edited 17:02

WASHINGTON — CIA officials had rave reviews for Boris Pasternak's classic Russian novel "Doctor Zhivago" — not for its literary merit but as a propaganda weapon in the Cold War.


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Russian writer Boris Pasternak - Scottmga / Flickr

The U.S. intelligence agency saw the book as a challenge to communism and a way to make Soviet citizens question why their government was suppressing one of their greatest writers, according to newly declassified CIA documents that detail the agency's involvement in the book's printing, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

Moscow was both angered and embarrassed by the eventual success of the novel and of David Lean's lavish 1965 movie version, which won five Academy Awards and was nominated for best picture.

Pasternak's romantic epic chronicles the life of Yury Zhivago, a physician and poet, and his love for two women through decades of revolutions, wars, civil war and communist oppression. "Doctor Zhivago" had a religious, mystical tone and its main character did not hew to official Marxist ideology.

Russian critics denounced Pasternak as a traitor and the Soviet publishing industry would not touch it, but an Italian literary scout took a copy of the manuscript out of the Soviet Union and an Italian company published it in 1957.

המשך:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/...ool/497660.html

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