US CIA reveals how it used Doctor Zhivago to undermine Soviet Union
US spy agency details how it used Boris Pasternak's Soviet-era classic as a weapon to undermine the authority of the Kremlin among Russians
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, The Washington Post reported.
The United States 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 Post said on Sunday.
The Soviet government had banned the novel and British intelligence first recognised its propaganda value in 1958, sending the CIA two rolls of film of its pages and suggesting it be spread through the Soviet Union and eastern Europe.
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 also nominated for the best picture award.
Pasternak's romantic epic chronicles the life of Yuri 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 follow 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.
Shortly afterwards, the CIA became involved, according to recently declassified memos obtained by authors Peter Finn and Petra Couvee in their research for the book The Zhivago Affair: The Kremlin, the CIA and the Battle Over a Forbidden Book, which will be released in June.