Word: pasternaks
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Lara was "the purest thing in the world," and "nothing equaled her in spiritual beauty." She was like Russia itself: "martyred, stubborn, extravagant, crazy, irresponsible, adored." In these words, Boris Pasternak described the beautiful heroine of his great novel, Doctor Zhivago, known to readers the world over-except in Russia, where Zhivago is banned...
Hanged Husband. What was not generally known was the fact that Pasternak had drawn Lara from a real-life model: Olga Ivinskaya, 55, a woman born to poetry and suffering. Pasternak first met her in postwar Moscow, where she was working as a translator for the State Publishing House. Olga had already experienced the full bitterness of Soviet life. Her first husband hanged himself to avoid arrest in the Stalin purges of 1938. Her second died fighting for Russia against the invading Nazis. Each had left her a child: Irina and Dmitry. Olga was a poet herself, and her acquaintanceship...
Their growing friendship was interrupted in 1948 for a typically Russian reason: she was hustled off to Moscow's grim Lubianka Prison and reportedly tortured to get a confession implicating Pasternak. Olga steadfastly refused and was sent to a concentration camp...
Five years later, Olga was freed in the amnesty following Stalin's death. She returned to Moscow and Pasternak. In her absence, Pasternak had supported her two children, and he became especially fond of Irina, regarding her as his adopted daughter. Olga moved to the writers' suburb of Peredelkino. With Daughter Irina, she took a cottage near the dacha occupied by Pasternak and his wife Zinaida. Olga acted as Pasternak's literary agent, typed his manuscripts and helped correct his proofs...
...Ivinskaya, who was the model for Larisa, the heroine in Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, has reportedly been imprisoned by the Soviet government...