The Real Doctor Zhivago

The story behind Doctor Zhivago, from the life and loves of its creator Boris Pasternak to the remarkable tale of the publication of the novel in the West involving secrecy, intrigue, and spies at the height of the Cold War. The manuscript of the novel, which could not be published in the USSR in the late 1950s, was smuggled to the West by British and Italian citizens, to be printed, in Russian, in the Netherlands, financed by the CIA, with the imprint of an Italian publisher, to be distributed to Russian visitors at the stand of the Vatican at the World exhibition in Brussels. After the publication of the novel in the West in translation, Pasternak was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, an honour he could not accept in person, because it was made clear to him that he would not be allowed back into the USSR if he traveled to accept the prize.