New book claims CIA helped Boris Pasternak win Nobel Prize

A new book, offering an account of how the CIA helped to ensure Russian writer and poet, Boris Pasternak, won the 1958 Nobel Prize for his novel Doctor Zhivago, will be released later this year.

The epic novel was first published in Italian, since it was banned in the Soviet Union.

It has never really been clear how Doctor Zhivago came to be published in its original language and sent to the Swedish Academy just in time for Pasternak to be considered for the 1958 Prize.

“The Laundered Novel” claims the CIA played the key role in making sure Boris Pasternak received the Nobel Prize, in order to embarrass the Kremlin. The rumour has been around for years and the author of the new book, Ivan Tolstoy, says he is not telling a new story, but is just the first to name the CIA.

The story of a man torn between two women during the Russian Revolution of 1917 was first printed in Italian by Milanese editor Giangiacomo Feltrinelli in 1957. Feltrinelli, however, was a communist, with no wish to offend the Kremlin.

According to Tolstoy, the CIA was behind the version that looked like it was printed in the USSR.

'They chose people to make a type setting, they chose the typography and the printing house where it was printed, but they needed only one thing, the main thing -the manuscript – where to get it?' the author says.

So, when the CIA found out it would be flying across Europe in 1957, it forced the plane to make an emergency landing in Malta.

As Ivan Tolstoy claims, they stopped the plane and secretly made a photocopy of the manuscript while all the passengers were in the airport. Then they put it back in its place and the plane flew off to the right city.

Five copies were taken to Stockholm and the Nobel Commission gave it the top prize.

However, just a week after a joyful acceptance, Pasternak had a sudden change of mind.

'I must reject this undeserved prize which has been presented to me. Please do not receive my voluntary rejection with displeasure,' was the winners answer.

Boris Pasternak's son Evgeny, who received the Nobel Prize on behalf of his father in 1989, says he was trying to protect his family.

'It went off like a bomb. After the announcement from the Nobel Committee, the Culture Department of the Party's Central Committee prepared a special report. It unleashed a massive persecution campaign, which eventually caused my fathers early death in 1960,' Evgeny Pasternak explains.

Ivan Tostoy, however, says it may actually have kept the writer out of prison.

'After the Nobel Prize it was impossible to touch him. Yes, Pasternak was in bad health but don't forget he was 70,' he states.

Also, both Mr Tolstoy and the writer's son say that Boris Pasternak knew nothing about the CIA.