Boris Pasternak’s epic masterpiece Dr. Zhivago is above all else a political novel, designed as an attack on Soviet totalitarianism and meant to show the horror of what he called the “inhuman reign of the lie.” A recent book tells the story of how the Kremlin tried to suppress the novel, of Pasternak’s courage in the face of official intimidation, and of the role played by the CIA in getting the book published and distributed in Western Europe. When Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in 1958, the Soviet Union struck back, including by using anti-Semitism as a weapon. Algis Valiunas writes:
Straightaway [after the prize was announced] the Literaturnaya Gazeta ran a novella-length editorial of florid scurrility, headlined “A Provocative Sortie of International Reaction.” The op-ed included the entire rejection letter sent to Pasternak in 1956 that certified the official worthlessness and downright malignancy of the work and its author. The gazette had a circulation of almost 900,000 readers, and this issue sold out in a few hours. The epithet of choice for Pasternak in the Soviet press and in the mouths of the faithful soon became “Judas,” for while propagating belief in Christ might be anti-Soviet slander, everyone understood how aptly the biblical allusion fit the arch-betrayer of the Socialist Motherland, especially when the offender was [of Jewish origin].
Read more on Commentary: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-man-who-dared/