Word: pasternak
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Defending Pasternak...
...Pasternak is made to inveigh against capitalism, under which "every man must be prepared to commit any crime for the sake of money." In the U.S.S.R., on the other hand, "the Bolsheviks are reshaping human nature, directing man toward a better future." Metamorphosed into a true Soviet patriot and Communist, the fictional Pasternak has little trouble turning down the Nobel Prize: "What if I really am just a puppet in the hands of the imperialists?" In any case, he concludes, the prize was "not worth having...
Krotkov's book even demeans one of the most celebrated love stories of modern literary history. Olga Ivinskaya, Pasternak's model for Lara in Doctor Zhivago, had been the poet's companion and secretary for 14 years. Now 68 years old and living in Moscow, Ivinskaya has survived two terms in concentration camps for her association with the poet...
...judge by this book, Ivinskaya's fate was well deserved. As Krotkov tells it, she was responsible for Doctor Zhivago's publication abroad, thus causing all the troubles. Pasternak is said to have repudiated her when she supposedly pocketed some of the novel's foreign royalties. That alle gation corresponds to the line taken by the Soviets in 1960 to justify the eight-year sentence meted out to Ivinskaya, who was convicted on a trumped-up charge of speculating in foreign currency...
Actually, as Pasternak's frantic letters to friends abroad show, his greatest fear during the terror-filled months following the Nobel award was for Ivinskaya. "She and her children are a kind of hostage for me," he wrote. In large part, his refusal of the Nobel Prize and his other concessions had been attempts to save her. Shortly before his death, he managed to send a letter to the West saying: "If, God forbid, they should arrest Olga, all toc sins should ring, just as would have been done in my own case, for an attack...