Doctor Zhivago

by Boris Pasternak, first published 1957

This epic tale about the effects of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath on a bourgeois family was not published in the Soviet Union until 1987. One of the results of its publication in the West was Pasternak's complete rejection by Soviet authorities; when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958 he was compelled to decline it. The book quickly became an international best-seller. Dr. Yury Zhivago, Pasternak's alter ego, is a poet, philosopher, and physician whose life is disrupted by the war and by his love for Lara, the wife of a revolutionary. His artistic nature makes him vulnerable to the brutality and harshness of the Bolsheviks. The poems he writes constitute some of the most beautiful writing featured in the novel. \--------- Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak's only novel, is set between the early 1900s and World War II and contains complex plot lines and themes, including criticisms of the role of the government in the lives of citizens, and criticisms of the October Revolution and its aftermath. The book had been submitted for publication to Novyi Mir in 1956 and had been initially accepted, but at the last moment its publication was revoked by the authori

Documented challenge/ban history: Political content deemed critical of the Soviet state; banned in the USSR and smuggled abroad for publication — Read about this book on Wikipedia · Historical censorship record
  • 1957 — Banned from publication in the Soviet Union; the manuscript is smuggled to Italy and published there by Feltrinelli
  • 1958 — Pasternak is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature but is forced by Soviet authorities to decline it under threat of expulsion from the USSR
  • 1958 — The CIA covertly prints a Russian-language edition and distributes it to Soviet visitors at the Brussels World's Fair, hoping the book would embarrass Soviet authorities (declassified in 2014)

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