From: ESRCs East West Programme
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Subject: During the Cold War, the
CIA loved literature, ‘Doctor Zhivago’ in particular (WashPost)
“This book has great propaganda value,” a CIA memo to
all branch chiefs of the agency’s Soviet Russia Division stated, “not only for
its intrinsic message and thought-provoking nature, but also for the
circumstances of its publication: we have the opportunity to make Soviet
citizens wonder what is wrong with their government, when a fine literary work
by the man acknowledged to be the greatest living Russian writer is not even
available in his own country in his own language for his own people to read.”
During Cold War, CIA used ‘Doctor
Zhivago’ as a tool to undermine
By Peter Finn and
A secret package arrived at CIA headquarters in
January 1958. Inside were two rolls of film from British intelligence —
pictures of the pages of a Russian-language novel titled “Doctor Zhivago.”
The book, by poet Boris Pasternak, had been banned
from publication in the
“This book has great propaganda value,” a CIA memo to all branch chiefs of the
agency’s Soviet Russia Division stated, “not only for its
intrinsic message and thought-provoking nature, but also for the circumstances
of its publication: we have the opportunity to make Soviet citizens wonder what
is wrong with their government, when a fine literary work by the man
acknowledged to be the greatest living Russian writer is not even available in
his own country in his own language for his own people to read.”
The memo is one of more than 130 newly declassified
CIA documents that detail the agency’s secret involvement in the printing of
“Doctor Zhivago” — an audacious plan that helped deliver the book into the
hands of Soviet citizens who later passed it friend to friend, allowing it to
circulate in
Because of the enduring appeal of the novel and a 1965
film based on it, “Doctor Zhivago” remains a landmark work of fiction. Yet few
readers know the trials of its birth and how the novel galvanized a world
largely divided between the competing ideologies of two superpowers. The CIA’s
role — with its publication of a hardcover Russian-language edition printed in
the
[Explore a selection of the CIA documents]
The newly disclosed documents, however, indicate that
the operation to publish the book was run by the CIA’s Soviet Russia Division,
monitored by CIA Director Allen Dulles and sanctioned by President Dwight D.
Eisenhower’s Operations Coordinating Board, which reported to the National
Security Council at the White House. The OCB, which oversaw covert activities,
gave the CIA exclusive control over the novel’s “exploitation.”
The “hand of the
The documents were provided at the request of the
authors for a book, “The Zhivago Affair,” to
be published June 17. Although they were redacted to remove the names of
officers as well as CIA partner agencies and sources, it was possible to
determine what lay behind some of the redactions from other historical records
and interviews with current and former
A voice from the past
During the Cold War, the CIA loved literature —
novels, short stories, poems. Joyce, Hemingway, Eliot. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy,
Nabokov.
Books were weapons, and if a work of literature was
unavailable or banned in the Soviet Union or
In this light, “Doctor Zhivago” was a golden
opportunity for the CIA.
Both epic and autobiographical, Pasternak’s novel revolves
around the doctor-poet Yuri Zhivago — his art, loves and losses in the decades
surrounding the 1917 Russian Revolution. At times, Zhivago is Pasternak’s alter
ego. Both the character and the writer, who was born in 1890, were from a lost
past, the cultured milieu of the
Pasternak knew that the Soviet publishing world would
recoil from the alien tone of “Doctor Zhivago,” its overt religiosity, its
sprawling indifference to the demands of socialist realism and the obligation
to genuflect before the October Revolution.
But Pasternak had long displayed an unusual
fearlessness: visiting and giving money to the relatives of people who had been
sent to the gulag when the fear of taint scared so many others away,
intervening with authorities to ask for mercy for those accused of political
crimes, and refusing to sign trumped-up petitions demanding execution for those
designated enemies of the state.
“Don’t yell at me,” he said to his peers at one public
meeting where he was heckled for asserting that writers should not be given
orders. “But if you must yell, at least don’t do it in unison.”
Pasternak felt no need to tailor his art to the
political demands of the state. To sacrifice his novel, he believed, would be a
sin against his own genius. As a result, the Soviet literary establishment
refused to touch “Doctor Zhivago.”
Fortunately for Pasternak, a
In November 1957, an Italian-language edition of
“Doctor Zhivago” was released.
CIA saw a weapon
In
In a memo in July 1958,
John Maury, the Soviet Russia Division chief, wrote that the book was a clear
threat to the worldview the Kremlin was determined to present.
“Pasternak’s humanistic message — that every person is
entitled to a private life and deserves respect as a human being, irrespective
of the extent of his political loyalty or contribution to the state — poses a
fundamental challenge to the Soviet ethic of sacrifice of the individual to the
Communist system,” he wrote.
In an internal memo shortly after the
appearance of the novel in Italy, CIA staff members
recommended that “Doctor Zhivago” “be published in a maximum number of foreign
editions, for maximum free world distribution and acclaim and consideration for
such honor as the Nobel prize.”
While the CIA hoped Pasternak’s novel would draw
global attention, including from the
As its main target for distribution, the agency
selected the first postwar world’s fair, the 1958 Brussels Universal and
International Exposition. Forty-three nations were participating at the
500-acre site just northwest of central
Both the
After first attempting to arrange a secret printing of
the novel through a small
The two intelligence agencies were close. CIA
subsidies in 1958 paid for about 50 of the BVD’s 691 staff members, and new
Dutch employees were trained in
Cini told him it would be a rush job, but the CIA was
willing to provide the manuscript and pay well for a small print run of “Doctor
Zhivago.” He emphasized that there should be no trace of involvement by the
In early September 1958, the first Russian-language
edition of “Doctor Zhivago” rolled off the printing press, bound in the
signature blue linen cover of Mouton Publishers of The Hague.
The books, wrapped in brown paper and dated Sept. 6,
were packed into the back of a large American station wagon and taken to Cini’s
home. Two hundred copies were sent to headquarters in
“Doctor Zhivago” could not be handed out at the
The Vatican pavilion was called Civitas Dei, the City
of
There, the CIA-sponsored edition of “Doctor Zhivago”
was pressed into the hands of Soviet citizens. Soon the book’s blue linen
covers were littering the fairgrounds. Some who got the novel were ripping off
the cover, dividing the pages, and stuffing them in their pockets to make the
book easier to hide.
The CIA was quite pleased with itself. “This phase can
be considered completed successfully,” read a Sept. 10, 1958, memo.
In the
Contractual problems
There was only one problem: The CIA had anticipated
that the Dutch publisher would sign a contract with Feltrinelli, Pasternak’s
The contract was never signed, and the
Russian-language edition printed in
The spies in
A writer using the pseudonym
The CIA concluded that the printing was, in the end,
“fully worth trouble in view obvious effect on Soviets,” according to a Nov. 5, 1958, cable sent by Dulles,
the director. The agency’s efforts, after all, had been re-energized by the
awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Pasternak the previous month.
The Kremlin treated the award as an anti-Soviet
provocation, vilified the author, and forced Pasternak to turn it down.
The CIA provided elaborate guidelines for its officers
on how to encourage Western tourists to talk about literature and “Doctor
Zhivago” with Soviet citizens they might meet.
“We feel that Dr. Zhivago is an excellent springboard
for conversations with Soviets on the general theme of ‘Communism versus
Freedom of Expression,’ ” Maury wrote in a memo in April 1959.
“Travelers should be prepared to discuss with their Soviet contacts not only
the basic theme of the book itself — a cry for the freedom and dignity of the
individual — but also the plight of the individual in the communist society.”
Clandestine edition
Prompted by the attacks on Pasternak in
Officials at the agency reviewed all the difficulties
with the Mouton edition published in the
The agency already had its own press in
By July 1959, at least 9,000 copies of a miniature
edition of “Doctor Zhivago” had been printed “in a one and two volume series,”
the latter presumably to make it not so thick and easier to split up and hide.
The CIA attempted to create the illusion that this edition of the novel was
published in
CIA records state that the miniature books were passed
out by “agents who [had] contact with Soviet tourists and
officials in the West.” Two thousand copies of this edition were also set aside
for dissemination to Soviet and Eastern European students at the 1959 World
Festival of Youth and Students for Peace and Friendship, which was to be held
in
There was a significant effort to distribute books in
The New York Times reported that some members of the
Soviet delegation to the
On another occasion, a Soviet visitor to the youth
festival recalled returning to his bus and finding the cabin covered with
pocket editions of “Doctor Zhivago.”
“None of us, of course, had read the book but we
feared it,” he wrote in an article many years later.
Soviet students were watched by the KGB, who fooled no
one when these intelligence operatives described themselves as “researchers” at
the festival. The Soviet “researchers” proved more tolerant than might have
been expected.
“Take it, read it,” they said, “but by no means bring
it home.”
Adapted from “The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA
and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book,” by Peter Finn and