All language subtitles for BBC.The.Real.Doctor.Zhivago.1080p.HDTV.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org_track3_eng

It's one of the greatest love
stories of the 20th century.

A tale of passion and fear,

set against a backdrop of
revolution and violence.

GUNSHOT

Julie Christie as Lara.

The violent, sensual,
sensitive girl.

Zhivago's great love and mistress.

But our story isn't about
Yuri Zhivago and Lara,

it's about their creator,

Boris Pasternak, a man who became
a prisoner in his own country.

He willingly committed acts of
literary suicide

practically every day.

It may have been the bravest book
ever written.

Pasternak faced penury, public
denunciation and even death.

IN RUSSIAN:

He wanted to have his say and he
knew that it was dangerous.

ARCHIVE: On Stalin's orders,

75% of the supreme War Council are
murdered.

Pasternak's love of Russia was
always at odds with his

disenchantment with
the brutal Soviet regime.

Writing the book under Stalin was
dangerous,

attempting to get it published
at the height of the Cold War,

even more so.

I would love to know who the
original source was

that British intelligence
got the manuscript

from before they gave it to the CIA.

The CIA used every opportunity they
could to catch on to something

cultural to injure the Russians.

Our story begins before the film
won five Oscars

and its author the Nobel Prize.

It's the untold story of
the real Doctor Zhivago,

Boris Pasternak.

Pasternak's only novel,
Doctor Zhivago,

bears witness to one of the greatest
moments of the 20th century -

the Russian Revolution -

and was immortalised in
David Lean's epic film.

From the most widely acclaimed novel
of our generation,

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents
David Lean's film,

of Boris Pasternak's
Doctor Zhivago.

It was on the streets of Moscow

that Boris Pasternak grew up and he
witnessed

the birth throes of the Russian
Revolution 100 years ago.

The book was Pasternak's attempt to
personalise what he experienced and

witnessed through this
momentous time.

An early scene in the film echoes
Pasternak's own feelings towards

the beginnings of the Revolution,

as Imperial cavalry charge
a peaceful protest march,

all seen through the eyes of
Yuri Zhivago.

When I read Doctor Zhivago,

I couldn't help but feel that
Yuri is Pasternak's alter ego.

Yuri, too, is a poet,

tormented by his great loves for
the women in his life and for

Mother Russia, where to this day,

Pasternak is still held in
high regard as a writer.

I welcome you on a tour devoted to
Boris Pasternak,

it is the place where he lived for
many, many years.

This area of Moscow connected with
his life very tightly and connected

with Doctor Zhivago and with
many of his poems.

I joined a tour tracing Pasternak's
early footsteps

in Moscow run by
Anna Sergeeva-Klatis,

a Russian Pasternak scholar and
lecturer at Moscow State University.

Anna, sorry to interrupt,
sorry, everybody.

This is a great turnout,
this evening.

What does that say about
the popularity and in the interest

in Pasternak in Russia now?
Because he's a great writer.

Is that true? Do we all agree?

SHE TRANSLATES TO RUSSIAN

Boris was a Muscovite
from his head to his...

Toes. ..toes.

He spoke like a Muscovite and he
moved like a Muscovite,

he loved Moscow and Moscow
reflected in many of his poems.

He left Moscow
for very short periods.

He spent all his life in Moscow.

What would you say is interesting
about Boris's upbringing?

It was quite bourgeois,
middle-class, wasn't it?

His family was an artistic family.

His father was a famous painter

and he was already famous
when Boris was born.

And his mother was
a very gifted pianist.

They both were very successful,

the atmosphere in the family
was really artistic.

He was very gifted person
from his childhood.

And he began to draw when he was
about 12 years of age.

His father was very satisfied.

He said that he can be a very
talented painter.

But he stopped.

He changed his mind.

And he began to play piano and he
had very good achievements in that,

but he also stopped that.

And then he went into philosophy

and he went to Germany
and he was offered

to continue his education
in Germany because, as a Jew,

he had no way to continue
his career in Russia.

And he refused because he began
to write poetry. He was 22.

That was the beginning.

Having found his true calling,

it was only five years later he saw
the start of the Revolution,

an event that changed his life
and changed Russia forever.

Excited by the Revolution,
Boris never left Russia.

His family were different.

Despite their liberal leanings,

the Pasternak family as a whole took
a wary view of the Revolution.

And when they happened to make
a journey to Germany in 1923,

they took the opportunity to make
the visit permanent

and went into exile.
First there, and later in Oxford.

The family home here is full of
images of Boris's Russian childhood

and the cultural greats who visited
when they lived in Moscow.

This is the garden room.

Being part of the intelligentsia
and cultural aristocracy,

the family had many stellar
visitors,

painted and drawn by Boris's father.

This one you might recognise, this
is Rachmaninov at the piano.

But, for Boris, one visitor
to their Moscow home

stood out more
than any of the others.

Boris remembers as a child being
woken by the sound of a piano

being played solo by his mother and

stumbling out into a room that was
full of people, including Tolstoy,

who was listening to the concert
that she was giving in their house.

This is Tolstoy in his family
estate,

reading one of his manuscripts.

For Boris, Tolstoy was a moral
example and an artistic example.

Tolstoy was interested
in the peasantry,

the common life.

And you can see this in Zhivago,

where Boris is also interested
in a language of peasant culture

which he uses.

So there was a strong feeling
of compassion for the underclass,

which Boris inherited.

Before the Revolution,

Tolstoy chose to stay in Russia and
was a thorn in the side of

the Romanovs.

Now, for Pasternak,

also feeling compelled to remain
in his motherland,

meant that he would be expected to
be loyal to the new Soviet regime.

If you want to see the how USSR
glorified the Revolution,

you need look no further than here
in Moscow's Revolution Square

underground station, where it's only
depicted as magnificent and epic.

Despite his privileged upbringing,

Pasternak greeted
the Revolution with gusto,

hoping for a fairer society and
a better system of government.

And you can see his initial
revolutionary fervour

in the pages of his novel.

"The Revolution broke out
willy-nilly,

"like a breath that's
been held too long.

"Everyone was revived, reborn,
changed, transformed.

"You might say that everyone has
been through two revolutions,

"his own personal revolution as
well as the general one."

The artists who were galvanised by
the Revolution soon divided into

two camps. There were those who
supported the state

and produced wholesome
propaganda like this.

Others, like Pasternak, remained
neutral, but, in doing so,

he made himself a target.

In 1922,

Trotsky summoned Pasternak to his
office and demanded to know what

his poetry meant and why he didn't
write about social themes.

And when Yuri's captured in
Doctor Zhivago, by the Red Army,

it's clear the scene reflects
Pasternak's

and other writers' fears.

Yes. I used to admire your poetry.

Thank you. I shouldn't
admire it now.

I should find it absurdly personal,
don't you agree?

Feelings, insights, affections,
it's suddenly trivial now.

You don't agree? You're wrong.

The personal life is dead in Russia.

History has killed it.

If the Russian people were fearful
under Lenin

in the years after his death,

they were soon subjected
to a new set of terrors

when Stalin took control.

ARCHIVE: On Stalin's orders,

75% of the Supreme War Council
are murdered.

In their places, Stalin installed

political commissars
who ensured his control.

Writers who were seen as a danger to
the state, no matter who they were,

put themselves at risk.

And, like all Russians,

Boris saw Vladimir Mayakovsky as
the greatest living writer.

A close friend and associate of
Boris Pasternak's,

he was dubbed the poet of
the Revolution

and he advocated socialist
thought through his verse.

But when Mayakovsky's writing became
critical of the regime,

his fate soon changed.

In 1930, Mayakovsky
committed suicide

by shooting himself in the heart.

Controversy rages as to
why he did it - lost love,

lost faith in the regime,
or even that he was murdered.

His funeral was the third biggest
in the history of the Soviet Union.

Pasternak was greatly disturbed
by this turn of events,

so much so that, 25 years later,

he reflected on Mayakovsky's
work in Zhivago.

"I've always liked Mayakovsky.

"What an all-devouring
poetic energy.

"And his way of saying a thing once
and for all, implacably,

"straight from the shoulder.

"And, above all, the way he takes
a good, bold swing,

"and chucks it all at the face of
society.

"And a bit further, somewhere,
into outer space."

Mayakovsky's death was only
the first of many.

As Stalin's terror convulsed Russia,

many of Pasternak's closest friends
would be exiled,

imprisoned or executed.

Like all writers of the time,

Pasternak had to think of his own
fate in the face of what was going

on all around him.

The years of Stalin's terror were
among the most tortuous

for Pasternak and his countrymen.

In 1932, Stalin's wife killed
herself over his infidelity,

shooting herself through the heart.

That struck a profound chord
with Pasternak,

who was himself tormented
over his own infidelity

in his first marriage.

He wrote a personal letter to
Stalin, full of deep condolence,

which is said to have bound
the leader to the poet for life

and given the latter
a unique protection.

Another incident that challenged
Pasternak's loyalty came on a Moscow

street corner when he met one of
the most popular and highly regarded

poets of the time.

Osip Mandelstam recited his new
verse, Stalin Epigram.

"But around him a crowd of
thin-necked henchmen

"And he plays with
the services of these half-men,

"Some are whistling, some meowing,
some sniffing.

"He's alone booming,
poking, and whiffing."

Pasternak knew those lines could be
fatal to the pair of them.

So he told Mandelstam,
"This never happened,

"you didn't read that to me,
I never heard it."

Mandelstam was arrested.

Stalin phoned Pasternak personally,

wanting to know if the prisoner
was a good writer or not.

Pasternak avoided the question,
whereupon Stalin taunted him,

"Why aren't you standing up
for your friend?"

The call only lasted a few minutes,

but it almost certainly sealed
Mandelstam's fate.

Stalin was clearly testing
Pasternak's loyalty to the regime.

And while he was protected,
Mandelstam was not.

So, when arrested again and charged

with counterrevolutionary
activities,

Mandelstam died in transit
to a labour camp.

The official cause of death was
"unspecified illness."

Pasternak would never forget
what happened to Mandelstam

and his feelings
of guilt and complicity

would haunt him
for the rest of his life.

I'm leaving Moscow by train
to take a trip to the country

to see the next trick
Stalin had up his sleeve.

He created a community for writers
at Peredelkino,

just 15 miles south-west of Moscow.

Well, we're only a few minutes by
train outside Moscow,

but the difference is palpable.

Away from all that smog and stress
and pollution,

you were serenaded by birdsong
in this sun-dappled wood.

And you have a sense of what this
might have meant for Pasternak,

to connect to the Russian
countryside,

so important in the literary canon
and to the Russian soul.

But the reality of living
and writing in Peredelkino

was described by one of
Pasternak's neighbours, Dukovsky,

as "entrapping writers
in a cocoon of comforts,

"surrounding them
with a network of spies."

Within a year of being here,

Pasternak felt impassioned and
strong enough to start writing

Doctor Zhivago, a novel that speaks
of his love of Russia

and his hatred of
the brutal regime that now ran it.

It's very plain and austere,
isn't it?

It's a sort of writer's desk out of
a woodcut or a fairy tale.

I mean, partly, that's to ensure
no distractions,

but also what it connects with,
I think, is a reference

I'm sure I came across in the book,
either by Pasternak,

or his alter ego, Zhivago,

saying that what he wants

is to connect with the ordinary man
and woman.

His book, his great classic, isn't
some highfalutin, literary puzzle,

but it's the story of Russia
for everybody to understand.

Plain speaking from a plain desk.

It wasn't just Doctor Zhivago that
Pasternak poured his writing into

from this desk.

He risked keeping in regular
correspondence with his exiled

family in Oxford, telling them of
the pressures he was under,

being part of the writer's colony
in Peredelkino.

These are extracts of letters that
Boris wrote to his sisters.

"The absurdities of life here,

"the obstacles they create
for writers and artists

"are beyond belief,

"but that's how a revolution
has to be."

In his letters to his sisters,
as far as he's able,

knowing of course that all his
letters were probably

being intercepted and
read by the Soviets at that time,

he talks about the incredible
struggle to write his truth

about a regime when

of course that was absolutely not
the thing to be doing.

I genuinely believe that
he, willingly almost,

committed acts of literary suicide,
practically every day.

Pasternak carried on writing
Doctor Zhivago

in the idyll of Peredelkino,

when suddenly his and Russia's
worlds were turned upside down.

The domestic terrors of Stalin's
regime abated when history took

an unexpected turn.

Russia entered the Second World War,

joining the fight against
Nazi Germany.

Stalin called it
the great patriotic war.

Pasternak saw it as a real chance
for a new dawn for Russia,

and became a fire warden, defusing
the bombs that fell on Moscow.

He even visited the front line to
read his poetry to the troops.

But his hopes for a new Russia
were short-lived.

The repressions and ethnic cleansing
that followed victory meant that

the terrors got even worse.

As Stalin's iron grip tightened,

Pasternak returned to writing
Doctor Zhivago in Peredelkino.

He lived there with his second wife,
Zinaida,

having divorced his first,
Evgeniya.

But a trip to Moscow in search of a
publisher lead to a chance encounter

that changed his life forever

and gave his novel and
David Lean's film

a memorable love affair
at its centre.

It made Yuri Zhivago
a romantic hero.

This scene is a direct reference to
Pasternak's visit to the offices of

the state literary magazine,
Novy Mir.

It was there he met Olga Ivinskaya,
who was working for the magazine.

Her boss introduced him to her
as "your biggest fan."

Returning home that evening,

Olga told her mother that she'd been
"speaking with God."

The next day, Pasternak sent her
his full set of works and

their relationship began.

Boris was the most
impassioned of men.

What I most love about him is that
you feel his extreme strain of

emotionalism, through everything
that he did,

and he did not take
anything lightly.

I feel that he did have a certain
moral weakness and that played

out in his relationships.

Olga had a daughter
from a previous relationship

and she remembered those
early days of Boris and her mother

very well. My mother. Right.

Pasternak.

What sort of man do you think
Boris Pasternak was?

Irena's mother, Olga,

soon became Pasternak's mistress
and his muse for Doctor Zhivago.

continued writing the book
with Olga in his life.

There is absolutely no doubt that
Olga became the prototype

for Lara in Doctor Zhivago.

Lara originally was based on his
second wife, Zinaida Neigauz,

but the minute that he meant Olga,

his Lara softened and flowered
to embody Olga Ivinskaya.

David Lean's interpretation of this
love affair was a big selling point

for the film.

Wouldn't it have been
lovely if we'd met before?

Before we did?

Yes.

We'd have got married,
had a house and children.

If we'd had children, Yuri,

would you have liked a boy
or a girl?

I think we may go mad if we think
about all that.

I shall always think about it.

Inspired by his new love,

Pasternak threw himself
into what would be

his great epic of the Russian
Revolution and civil war.

He poured all his anguish and his
deepest reflections into its pages.

When his character Yuri
talks about writing,

well, it could almost be the voice
of Pasternak himself.

"Ever since his school days, he
dreamed of writing a book in prose.

"A book of impressions of life,
in which he would conceal,

"like buried sticks of dynamite,

"the most striking things he had so
far seen and thought about."

There have been writers who have
said that Zhivago is less a novel

than an autobiography of a poet.

It was his political beliefs

that he channelled through
the character of Yuri Zhivago.

In David Lean's film adaptation,

the scene between Yuri and his
half-brother,

played by Alec Guinness, shows
Pasternak's political intentions.

You lay life on a table and you cut
out all the tumours of injustice.

Marvellous. 'I told him, if he felt
like that,

'he should join the party.'

Ah, cutting out the tumours of
injustice, that's a deep operation.

Someone must keep life alive
while you do it.

By living. Isn't that right?

'I thought then it was wrong.

'He told me what he thought about
the party and I trembled for him.

'He approved of us, but for reasons
which were subtle, like his verse.'

As he carried on writing Zhivago,

the threats towards Pasternak soon
became more direct and personal.

Pasternak's fear and sense of
isolation grew deeper.

In 1948,

25,000 copies of his poems were
pulped by the state publisher

and the leading literary magazine,
Novy Mir, rejected his verse.

As Pasternak noted drily,

"public appearances by me are
considered undesirable."

In 1949,

the secret police went to see Stalin
to say they were going to arrest

Pasternak. Imagine their surprise
when the Great Leader began

reciting Pasternak's verse.

"Heavenly colour, colour blue,"
he said.

And Stalin told his goons,
"Leave him, he's a cloud dweller."

He didn't know that he had this kind
of golden protection on high from

Stalin, and yet he risked his
literary life daily

writing his truth about
a regime which appalled him.

Pasternak's faith in his work
was unshakeable.

He began having readings of it at
his dacha and here in Moscow.

This was an extraordinary act of
bravery, or perhaps recklessness,

on his part. After all, at the time,

copies of his poems were being
pulped,

orders for his arrest were
circulating,

and yet here he was
risking the very act of defiance

which had cost his friend
Mandelstam his life.

Pasternak must have known that
informers would be eavesdropping on

these readings. Retribution,
when it came, was excruciating.

The authorities left Pasternak
himself alone.

Instead, they arrested his new love,
Olga Ivinskaya.

In 1949, Olga was incarcerated in
the notorious Lubyanka prison

in central Moscow.

She was put in solitary confinement

and she was interrogated nightly
over the book

that her lover was writing.

She was subjected to appalling sleep
deprivation with blinding lights in

her face, and I think that the
authorities thought that, probably,

she would crack very quickly
and reveal all.

Not once does she ever betray
the man she loved.

She did discover that she was
pregnant

while she was in the Lubyanka.
And one day she was told

she was going to be allowed
a meeting with Boris,

so she was absolutely thrilled and
put on her favourite crepe de chine

polka-dot dress, which, bizarrely,
her mother had managed to smuggle

into the Lubyanka for her.

And, in fact, she was driven in
a blacked-out car across Moscow

and taken to another government
building where, six months pregnant,

she was marched up and down flights
of stairs and, eventually,

taken down to the basement where she
smelt this very strange smell

and these doors open, and she was
pushed into the Moscow morgue,

where there were the bodies on
zinc top tables, under tarpaulin.

And, of course, because she'd had
no contact with Boris,

she assumed that he was dead and
that those were one of those bodies

and she was left for many hours in
the morgue in her silk dress and,

of course, the next day
she miscarried.

Unaware of any of this,

Pasternak himself was summoned
to the Lubyanka,

expecting to collect
his newborn child.

Instead, he was palmed off with some
old letters and gifts

that he'd given to Olga.

It would be months before he learned
the grisly truth.

Pasternak was distraught.

He told a friend,
"Everything is finished now.

"They've taken her away from me
and I'll never see her again.

"It's like death.

"Even worse."

She was sentenced to four years
hard labour.

Pasternak evoked his sense
of desolation in Doctor Zhivago

when Lara disappears,
which David Lean used

as one of the closing
scenes to his epic

interpretation of the novel.

One day, she went away and didn't
come back.

She died, or vanished somewhere

in one of the labour camps.

A nameless number on a list
that was afterwards mislaid.

That was quite common in those days.

Despite these traumas,
Pasternak kept writing.

If the Soviet tactic was to pressure
him to stop, it wasn't working.

And, then, in 1953,

Stalin's death heralded a new era of
hope and redemption for Pasternak.

Olga was released after four years

and they rekindled
their love affair.

Towards the end of
the writing of the novel,

Olga was typing up the manuscript
every afternoon

and it was she who was
literally taking bound copies

of the manuscript
around to publishers.

She acted like an editor, a literary
agent, she was his stalwart,

she watched his back. She absolutely
held this man energetically

with this love and belief and
support.

And I think we owe her
everything.

In 1954, after 20 years work,

Pasternak finished writing
Doctor Zhivago in Peredelkino.

He was ecstatic.

He wrote, "You cannot imagine
what I have achieved.

"I have found and given names to the
sorcery that has been the cause of

"suffering, bafflement, amazement
and dispute for several decades.

"Everything is named, in simple,
transparent and sad words.

"I also renewed and redefined the
dearest and most important things.

"Land and sky, great passion,
creative spirit, life and death."

If Boris's feelings about
Mother Russia were clear,

so, too, were his enduring feelings
towards the Soviet regime

in the pages of Doctor Zhivago.

"I don't know of any teaching more
self-centred

"and further from
the facts than Marxism.

"Ordinarily, people are anxious
to test their theories in practice,

"to learn from experience.

"But those who wield power are so
anxious to establish the myth of

"their own infallibility
that they turn their backs

"on truth as squarely
as they can.

"Politics mean nothing to me.

"I don't like people who are
indifferent to the truth."

Despite such bold passages,

Pasternak was still confident
his book would be published

and he submitted it
to the state publisher, Novy Mir.

Advertisements even appeared

forecasting the imminent arrival
of the book.

But then the Soviets
moved the goalposts.

In September 1956,
Novy Mir turned the book down

on ideological grounds.

Pasternak was torn between his
desire to see his book published

and his fear over the possible
repercussions.

He now realised
that if Doctor Zhivago

was ever to see the light of day,

he would have to look beyond
Russia for a publisher.

The Soviet loss of the book
was about to become a wonderful

opportunity for the West.
As luck would have it,

an Italian publishing house with
links to the Communist Party

had a man in Moscow at the time

and he got wind of Doctor Zhivago
and liked the sound of it.

That man would go on to be one of
the most important go-betweens in

literary history.

He's still alive, 95 now,

and lives in a village
north of Rome.

SPOKEN IN ENGLISH:

What happened next?

In 1957, Sergio D'Angelo
smuggled the Zhivago manuscript

out of Russia through Berlin,

where he passed it to his
employer, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli.

The Feltrinelli Foundation in Milan
is now run by his son, Carlo.

Why was your father so committed
to Zhivago and to Pasternak himself?

How did your father communicate
with Pasternak

during this whole process?

And this code paid off.

When the Russians forced Pasternak
to send a telegram to Feltrinelli,

asking for the manuscript to be
returned for corrections to be made,

it was in Russian.

So Feltrinelli knew it had been
sent under duress.

The Soviet regime then blocked
the publication of Doctor Zhivago

in Russia, putting more pressure
on Pasternak.

Even with his arrangement
with Feltrinelli in place,

he didn't stop there.

Either through determination
or desperation,

Pasternak gave out four other copies
to contacts he trusted to take to

I'm here in Paris to discover
how one of those typescripts

was smuggled into France.

Jacqueline de Proyart was studying
Russian at Moscow State University

in 1956, and her fellow students
said there was

someone she had to meet.

And they said, "You know, if you are
in Russia here

"and you don't go and see Pasternak,

"you will have been here
for nothing."

I was amazed because
I knew Pasternak,

but like a name across a blackboard.

You saw the book before you met
Pasternak.

I opened it, I read it,
the language is wonderful,

because it's a poetic one.

Very well-balanced.
Pleasant to hear.

I mean, it's very musical.

So the literary value
of this novel was...

Amazed me.

Pasternak trusted her and gave
her a set of typescripts

to smuggle back to France.

These typescripts didn't carry
Pasternak's name, for fear of them

being found in transit
out of Russia.

The only name printed in the front
matter was Doctor Zhivago.

Is this the one you took
to the French embassy?

Yes, yes, of course... It is.

I had it in my suitcase.

And I put it in a certain
way in my suitcase.

When I came back,

I opened my suitcase and the book
was not at all in the same place.

No, so somebody had opened your
suitcase. Yes. Of course.

But they didn't remove it.
They saw it...

They saw it, maybe they
opened it, they saw no name

and nobody knew Doctor Zhivago
at that time.

It was quite a scary proposition,

it was a big responsibility,
to do that.

SHE CHUCKLES

Well, I think when we
are 29, you have still punch.

It's not like putting a
microchip in a handkerchief, is it?

You've really got to...

You've really got to hide that.

No. And I love the fact that these
are sort of careless tea stains

on the cover of this great
historical document. It's life.

Meanwhile, in Oxford,

the exiled Pasternak family was also
involved in the intrigue of bringing

Boris' masterpiece to print.

When I was about 13, my mother

asked me to go with her
on a little bus journey

up to the northern part of Oxford

to the household of a Russian
academic

because she had to pick up a parcel.

I had the feeling this is
an important occasion.

There's something going on.

Why did she need me with her?

We came to this small
academic's house

and I was left in a room,
and my mother went into another room

and came back with
a brown paper parcel.

And the brown paper parcel

was the second volume
of the two-volume typescript

of Doctor Zhivago.

And what was the plan?

What was your mother meant to do?

Boris wanted her and his sister
to read it

and it was guarded
ferociously by them.

There was a controversy on whether
it would be dangerous

for Boris to have it
published or not.

And it clearly was dangerous
for Boris,

but on the other hand, Boris had

put the last 20 years of his life
working on it,

and he wanted to have his say,

and he knew that it was dangerous.

Despite the best efforts of
the Kremlin and

the Italian Communist party to get
the typescript back

from Feltrinelli in Milan to
censor,

Feltrinelli got the book
published first, in November 1957,

giving him the global copyright.

So great was the demand
for Doctor Zhivago

that he licensed rights
in 18 different languages

in advance of the novel's
publication.

No Russian writer had
gone round the state control of

published works before, and this
especially infuriated the new

Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev.

As if Pasternak's life
was not complicated and perilous

enough, he was about to become
a pawn in a much bigger

and more dangerous
political game,

as anything that annoyed
the Soviet Union was a godsend

for their biggest Cold War enemy.

The book came to the
attention of the CIA,

who wanted to make sure copies got
into the hands of ordinary Russians.

I'm here to meet Peter Finn,

who is now the national security
editor for the Washington Post.

In 2014, he co-wrote a book
documenting the CIA's involvement

in turning Pasternak's novel
against the Soviet state.

How did you get involved
in the story of Pasternak

and the writing
of this great book?

I was a correspondent in Moscow for
the paper between 2004 and 2008.

And at that time I started to read
about Pasternak

in various biographies

and I saw that the evidence on the
CIA and its role

was elusive but persistent.

I also realised that if I'm going to
bring anything to this story

that's fresh or original, I would
have to do get the CIA documents.

So, that was a long process,
that took probably three years

from when I first approached
the agency to when I got them.

What are the documents or paragraphs
that particularly catch your eye

from your tranche here?

This one I like because this is
the beginning of it all.

So, this is a document dated
January 2nd, 1958,

and you can see the outline
of the whole operation here.

They talk in the second paragraph,
and it's redacted, but essentially

"British intelligence are in favour
of exploiting Pasternak's book.

"and have offered to provide
whatever assistance they can.

"They have suggested the possibility
of getting copies into the hands of

"travellers going to
the Iron Curtain area."

So, it's essentially telling
headquarters,

"We are including two rolls of film,
this is the book, Doctor Zhivago."

This is very spy craft, isn't it?

Somebody has stood over the book

and taken pictures of
every page, presumably.

Yes, correct. And then used to
typeset their own edition.

So, for them, this was a propaganda
operation.

They viewed culture as a form of
propaganda

that they could use against
the Soviet state.

These were not...

They may have had very fine
literary tastes,

but they weren't doing this for
literary or philanthropic reasons.

They were doing this
for political reasons.

Now that the CIA had a manuscript
of the novel,

the race was on to weaponise it,

to turn it into a kind of cosh to
beat the Soviets with.

But they needed to conceal their
part in the subterfuge and find

a European publisher to print
copies in Russian.

And as for what happened next
in the story, well,

that brings me as far as you can
imagine from the steppes of Russia

to the bosky countryside of
Hampshire

and somebody who was
there at the time.

My husband worked for the
Dutch security service, the DBB.

And they set up an operation,

although it was initiated
by the CIA.

They found this printer in the Hague
and my husband,

he said to them, "I've got to go
and collect some books."

And he collected these books
from the publisher

and took them out to the CIA
officer's house in Wassenaar.

Are we talking about dozens or
hundreds?

Well, they printed 1,000 altogether.

And they took something
like 395 to the World Exhibition

that was being held that year
in Brussels.

And they took them to the
Vatican pavilion

and the Vatican,
when Soviet visitors came,

had a rather cunning arrangement

because they had a little sort of
chapel at the back of the pavilion,

so they would take their
Soviet visitors there

and hand out a book.

It had a hardback cover in blue

and it was wrapped
in plain brown paper.

Of course, these people who
were going back to the Soviet Union,

you couldn't just take a hardback
book, so they removed the cover,

divided the book into sections,

and stuffed them in pockets
or their trousers or whatever.

This is the original copy
that my husband brought back,

and he wrote on it,
"Saturday, 6th September, 1958."

I'm sure you read fluent Russian.

Sometimes.

Do you think, when we look back at
the Cold War and how it all ended,

how significant was this episode?

I think it did actually
help sway opinion.

It was very different
to military operations

because if you can sway
people's way of thinking,

in the long run,
that can be very effective.

Was there much discussion,

much thought about where this would
leave Pasternak

when his novel started turning up in
Russia in a Russian edition?

I don't think that they had worried
too much about that.

They were too keen on
embarrassing the Russians.

Boris, marooned in Peredelkino,

was oblivious to the way his book
was being used as a cultural

weapon against the Soviet Union,
but on 23rd October, 1958,

a very important
announcement was made,

shattering the relative calm
in the household.

It proved to be yet another major
embarrassment for the Russian state.

Imagine the elation bursting
into this quiet rural retreat

the day the telegram arrived in 1958

telling the isolated,
frustrated author

that he had won the Nobel Prize.

And here he is sharing
that moment of triumph.

But that sense of triumph was
short-lived when Pasternak found

himself confronting an exquisite
and somehow rather Russian dilemma.

Of course, he was free to go

and collect the Nobel Prize
if he wished,

but, if he did so, the authorities
left him under no doubt

that he would not be welcome again
in his mother country.

Word of Pasternak's award
soon got around and he came out onto

his steps to meet a horde of
journalists.

He told them, "To receive this prize
fills me with great joy and also

"gives me moral support,
but my joy is a lonely joy."

Perhaps he was referring to the
many people in his own country who

couldn't share in such happiness.

Closer to home,

Pasternak's nearest and dearest
also had grave misgivings and

his neighbour Fedin, another writer,
called on Pasternak,

not to offer his congratulations,

but to tell him on no account
should he accept the award.

But as the West was giving
Pasternak praises and prizes,

Russia reacted in a very
different way.

That same year, he was expelled from
the powerful Union of Writers,

then publicly denounced and
instructed to leave the Soviet Union

in front of Khrushchev.

This added to the pressures
on Pasternak, and, again,

the regime turned to his lover
Olga to reinforce that.

Olga was summoned to a meeting
in Moscow and left it fearful that

she and Boris were about to
be expelled.

On the street, she bumped into
a plausible-seeming fellow,

probably KGB, who gave her
a cock-and-bull story

about loving the poet's work.

All Pasternak had to do to be
safe, he said,

was to write to Khrushchev assuring
him of his allegiance to the USSR.

A letter was sent, but
its wording went on to become

a contentious issue in the
Pasternak family.

I've come back to Moscow to meet
Boris's daughter-in-law, Yelena,

who is very clear about the
particular point

Pasternak wanted to make.

Even given his perilous situation,

Pasternak was still willing to risk
riling the Soviet regime,

by making a clear and personal
distinction

between the Soviet Union he
despised, and the Russia he loved.

Isolated in Peredelkino,
Pasternak was reduced to poverty,

not being allowed to accept
the Nobel Prize money,

or the considerable royalties from
the novel's international sales.

But soon money worries became
overshadowed

when Boris was diagnosed
with lung cancer.

And just three years after
the global success of his novel,

he died here in Peredelkino
on the 30th of May, 1960.

The Russian Literary Gazette

carried only the smallest
of notices of his death.

If the Russian authorities wanted
Pasternak's death to pass unnoticed,

the Russian people had very
different ideas.

Unnoticed by the security guards,

handwritten messages for travellers
appeared at the ticket desk here

at Kiyevskaya station.

They said, "At three o'clock on the
afternoon of Thursday, 2nd June,

"the last leave-taking of
Boris Pasternak,

"the greatest poet of modern Russia,
will take place."

These little samizdat, or
underground funeral announcements,

led to thousands of mourners
travelling out from Moscow

to Peredelkino,
to attend Pasternak's last rites,

in defiance of strict Soviet laws
on mass gatherings.

The similarities between Pasternak's
own funeral and Yuri's in

David Lean's epic are striking
and poignant.

I was astonished at the extent of
his reputation.

His work was unattainable at the
time,

and was disapproved of by the party.

But if people loved poetry,
they loved poets,

and nobody loves poetry
like a Russian.

The enmity of the Russian state
towards Pasternak continued,

and shortly after the funeral,

Olga and Irina were sent to a labour
camp for allegedly receiving

royalties from the West.

It was not until 1988, 30 years
after he finished the book,

that it was finally published in
Russia in its original form,

and caused an instant sensation.

I love the image of
the Moscow Metro in 1988,

and absolutely everybody sitting
with their copies of Doctor Zhivago.

You know, a bit like when Harry
Potter comes out, and everybody...

Or Lady Chatterley.
Yes, or Lady Chatterley.

And there were queues snaking round
the streets

from book shops of people waiting,

spending their hard-earned roubles
to get a copy.

So, I think it was definitely worth
the wait.

Judging by the response I have to
meeting Russians around the world,

and in Russia, when they discover
I am a Pasternak,

it was definitely worth the wait.

The following year,

Pasternak's eldest son, Yevgeni,
was allowed to travel to Stockholm

and collect the Nobel Prize on
behalf of his father.

I feel this is an historic moment.

When you look at it now,

do you think it was worth all the
pain and suffering that he and other

people around him went through?

What struck me throughout has been
the extraordinary determination of

Boris Pasternak to abide
in Russia, his homeland,

and to live life on his own terms.

He somehow contrived to find hope
and promise

amidst incredible setbacks
and intolerable pressure.

And that is what makes the epilogue
of his book so compelling,

when the friends of Yuri Zhivago
are gathered together,

watching the sunset, with a copy
of his book in their hands.

"They felt a peaceful joy for this
holy city, and for the whole land,

"and for the survivors among those
who played a part in this story and

"for their children. And the silent
music of happiness filled them

"and enveloped them and spread
far and wide.

"And it seemed that the book in
their hands knew what they were

"feeling, and gave them its support
and confirmation."